


Fire and Ice

by nachtara



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Self-Harm, copious amounts of snark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-01-15 22:49:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 129,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12330423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nachtara/pseuds/nachtara
Summary: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. At least, that's what Seto Kaiba tells himself when he extends his help to the man who tried to kill him. But keeping Alistair that close has side effects he never could have predicted.Largely disillusioned after learning of Dartz's defeat, Alistair tries to focus on creating a life for himself, but finds it increasingly difficult to ignore the allure of his icy benefactor.





	1. The Offer

"One need not be a chamber to be haunted."

~Emily Dickinson

**The Offer**

     Alistair had never given much thought to how losing your soul would feel. He won a duel, his opponent gasped, perhaps clutched their chest, collapsed, and that was it; on to the next. But when, against all odds, Seto Kaiba had summoned the Blue Eyes Tyrant Dragon and defeated his monsters, and he'd watched in horrified surprise as his life points had spun down to zero, he'd realized how deceptively calm the process looked.   

Losing his soul had felt like a million hooks ripping his skin off in one torturous, burning motion that somehow seemed to last an eternity. He'd wanted to scream, god, how he'd wanted to scream, but he couldn't. He couldn't move. Couldn't think. Hell wasn't a place; it was what what sinners became. Unending, inescapable pain. 

There had been one shining moment of respite. One moment where he had remembered who he'd been before. Mikey had been there, his face so clear and yet Alistair knew the apparition would disappear if he tried to touch it. Mikey had been smiling, his face shining with excitement. "Alistair!" Mikey had called, the sound of his voice almost making Alistair weep.  "I've always been by your side, and I always will be. I promise!"   

Just as their eyes met, a thick white fog swept around them, blurring Mikey's features until he could no longer see him at all. 

Then the pain had returned. Only this time, instead of the feeling of being flayed alive, it was as though an infinite number of needles had been commissioned to sew his skin back to his tortured body. Once again he'd wanted to scream and couldn't. But although it went on as long as before, unlike the last time, it wasn't his brother's face he saw when he opened his eyes, but a white sky that seemed to undulate around a blinding sun. 

Was he still on the plane? Had losing his soul been a dream? Had the plane crashed? _Am I dead?_   His stomach growled just then and he grimaced in discomfort. _Guess not..._

He went to rub his head as he sat up, but the action caused a sharp stinging sensation to shoot up his arm. Hissing in pain, he looked down and saw two thin tubes had been taped to his forearm. A hospital? Completely disoriented, he looked around the rest of the room. What he'd taken to be the sun and sky were the overhead light throwing irregular shadows across a white ceiling. To one side, the machine connected with the IV hummed gently beside an empty chair while a window looked out onto a twilit parking lot lined by a row of palm trees that were swaying in an apparent breeze. So the plane _had_ crashed. And somehow, he'd survived. But what had become of---  

"Is sleeping beauty finally waking up? Took you long enough," a voice drawled from the doorway, and Alistair whipped his head around. Seto Kaiba was leaning nonchalantly against the door frame, his lips curled upwards in an infuriatingly amused smirk that couldn't warm the flintiness of his bright blue eyes. "I'm sorry, did I scare you?"

Confusion overrode Alistair's desire to wipe the cocky expression off Kaiba's face. "This doesn't make sense! The Orichalcos should have absorbed all of us." His hand went reflexively to the Orichalcos stone around his neck. 

Kaiba shot him a disparaging look. "Don't tell me you still believe all that crap about a magic seal that steals people's souls. We dueled, you lost, started seeing some sort of hallucination of your brother because of the high altitude, and passed out."

Alistair took a moment to process Kaiba's words before sitting back against the head board and even managing a grim smile."You may have cheated me of _my_ victory, but you won't escape from my master, so in the end, it doesn't matter if I'm the one that feeds you to the beast."   

Far from appearing to be intimidated, Kaiba chuckled. "I shouldn't laugh at you, it's just that you're so behind the times." His expression hardened. "Your pathetic excuse for a boss won't be coming to back you up anytime soon.  _I_  made sure of that." He grinned in self-satisfaction and added: "Dartz's plan to take over my company failed."

Alistair gaped at him, his confidence siphoned by total disbelief. That couldn't be right. There was no way that Kaiba had single-handedly defeated Dartz and the Great Leviathan. Not unless... Had Raphael's follow-up attempt to capture the soul of the pharaoh been unsuccessful? And what of Valon? Had he defeated Joey Wheeler? How long had he been unconscious that the last seven years of his life had been pulled out from under him? Because if what Kaiba said was true, it meant that all of their dreams to rebuild paradise would come to nothing. He gripped the sheets so hard he felt them start to fray, and clenched his jaw. 

"Don't look so disappointed," Kaiba said. "It's not the first time someone's tried to take my company from me and failed."

"I don't give a damn about your stupid company," Alistair snapped hotly."You're even more self-centered than I thought if you honestly think all this was just a plot to take over Kaiba Corporation."

Aside from subtly clenching his fists, Seto was careful not to let his annoyance show.  "I suggest you take that back," he advised Alistair coldly, relaxing his hands. He had no reason to let some nobody get under his skin.

Alistair sniffed disdainfully. He made to cross his arms, but the IV pulled painfully against his skin again. For a moment, the deja vu was almost strong enough for him to remember the moment he'd lost his soul. _It must have hurt_ , he thought. In fact, he knew it had. But the pain was just remote enough for the memory of it to remain out of his grasp. "Why should I make any effort to spare your feelings, Kaiba? There's nothing left for you or anyone else to take away from me." He wished he weren't lying in a hospital bed for this interaction, and made do with meeting Kaiba's eyes with a ferocious glare.

Seto was surprised by his seeming inability to rattle the fiery DOMA member, just as he had been before. His mere presence was usually enough to intimidate people, and if it came to it, a snarky jab here and there never failed to throw people off balance, and the tone he'd just used sent all on the receiving end scurrying to do his bidding. But Alistair stubbornly refused to do any of those things. It was annoying, certainly, but interesting. 

"It's not so much what you have to lose, but what you have to gain that you're putting in jeopardy," Seto replied calmly, and he was pleased to see he had Alistair's grudging attention. "The fact is that even though you've been nothing but a thorn in my side, a promise is a promise, and I'm not the kind of man to go back on my word."

"What the hell are you talking about, Kaiba?" Alistair demanded, gray eyes narrowing in suspicion.

Seto took the statement as an invitation. He was reluctant to reveal his offer to Alistair because he knew Alistair would agree, even if he tried to pretend he wouldn't. For all that Seto knew the DOMA member to be sanctimonious, he wasn't stupid. But Alistair's agreement meant he'd have to subject himself to many more of these confrontations in the foreseeable future. So if he had that to look forward to, Alistair was going to have to put up with his barbed delivery. "Let me ask you this for starters: who do you think paid for you to be here? The answer is me in case you weren't sure. Next, where are you planning on going now?"

Alistair gritted his teeth. If he was gauging Kaiba correctly, he was planning on answering that question. 

"That's what I thought; you don't have anywhere to go, do you?" Kaiba clarified with infuriating condescension. "Seems like your only option is to throw yourself on my generosity."

 _I don't have to take this_ , Alistair thought, growling in frustration. _I don't need_ Kaiba _!_

His stomach rumbled again and he felt his resolve rapidly ebbing. Without Dartz, he had no home, no job, and most importantly: no money. What difference did it make where his fresh start came from if in the end he finally earned his freedom? Indeed, it made sense that Kaiba should be the one to help him achieve this; it was Kaiba's fault he'd ended up here in the first place! Kaiba's fault that he had no home and no family to return to! Kaiba _owed_ him!

"Why would you want to help me anyway?" he demanded of Kaiba, his glare now directed at a point just over the champion duelist's shoulder. "Feeling guilty about what you did to my family? Because paying me off isn't going to bring them back!" He expected his statement to make Kaiba rethink toying with him, but to his surprise, what could almost pass as a look of pity flitted through Kaiba's eyes.

"I hate to break it to you, but you got played. Your family may have been murdered, but not only does that have nothing to do with me, it wasn't my step-father who was behind it either. Dartz just wanted you to think that so you'd join his pack of goons. _He's_ the one who killed your brother."

"That's a lie!" Alistair was stunned by Kaiba's allegation. Dartz had saved him! Rescued him from the wreckage of the camp. He would have saved Mikey too if he'd arrived just a few minutes sooner. He-- How had Dartz gotten there? Suddenly, Alistair couldn't remember. He remembered giving Mikey the locket with their mother's picture. He remembered the soldier urging them both into the tank. He remembered insisting that Mikey get in first. Mikey had dropped his action figure and Alistair had jumped down to retrieve it.

Then came the terrible explosion and the unnatural heat. He'd been thrown backwards and left him gasping for breath only to try to inhale air so hot it had left him dazed and coughing. He'd called out hoarsely for his brother like he'd done so many times before, only this time, Mikey never answered. 

He'd had no intention of leaving, but then the gunfire had started sounding again and he'd struggled to his feet to flee when he saw the scorched remnants of Mikey's Dino Dude lying on top of a piece of twisted metal. He'd picked it up before running unsteadily in the opposite direction, wiping tears off his face, but too scared to fully comprehend the finality of the loss of his best friend and the only family he'd had left.

And Gozaburo Kaiba had been there. Yes, he was sure of that. He'd seen him shaking hands with a government soldier.

Hadn't he? 

Every other second of that horrible hour was painted so vividly in his memory he needed only to close his eyes to be able to touch it, but that moment was hazy as though he was trying to look at it through choppy water. And where exactly had Dartz come from? It was as though he'd appeared out of thin air. No matter how Alistair tried to recall what had happened in between, a wall of blackness rose up to meet him.  

The Orichalcos had the power to bring up memories if the user willed it. He'd used that very power himself in his duel against Kaiba. Did it possess the ability to create memories too? 

Seto waited patiently while Alistair struggled through to the inevitable realization that he had in fact been nothing more than a pawn. Once he saw Alistair's look of defiance shift to one of horror, he said: "Believe whatever you like, but the fact remains that without my help, you're screwed. So what's it going to be? I don't have all day."

Alistair forced himself to look up at Kaiba once more. For the past seven years, Alistair had done little but expend energy hating the Kaibas. And although his initial goal had been to take down Gozaburo Kaiba, his death had done nothing but cause that anger to shift over to his eldest son with no particular differentiation. So what if Seto Kaiba had shut down Kaiba Corporation's weapons division? Since he benefited from the blood Gozaburo had been drenched in, he was guilty too! And even if that weren't true, he was every bit the ruthless, cocky businessman his father had been. 

He'd watched all of Kaiba's business meetings, watched him working in his office, listened in on his phone calls, tracked his cars, watched every interview he'd ever given, read every article he was quoted in. He knew what kind of person Seto Kaiba was, and the world would have been better off without him! 

And yet...

He studied Kaiba's expression. Knowing that Dartz had tricked him didn't change the fact that Kaiba wasn't a good person, so why would he offer any type of help? Kaiba wasn't one to give anything away for free and certainly not out of the goodness of his heart, so Alistair could only assume that the price of Kaiba's assistance would be his humiliation at having to take it. 

Even so, it was something. Much more than he would have expected from the Kaiba he knew. Thought he'd known. No, he couldn't be _that_ wrong. 

As little as he wanted to take whatever handout Kaiba was willing to offer him, and as wary of his intentions as he was, he knew it would be foolish to refuse on the grounds of pride. He was a scumbag, but Kaiba was right that with Dartz gone, he was screwed. He allowed his shoulders to slump in defeat. "Fine."

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

Alistair hated the smugness of Kaiba's tone, but managed to swallow his anger. "I'll accept your help."

"Oh thank God you're willing to 'accept' my help. You had me worried for a minute; I don't know what I would have done if you would have said no." Kaiba smirked again. "Now that that's settled I'm going to send the doctor in so he can make sure you're not going to collapse again, then we're going back to Domino." Without another word he swept out of the room, the heavy fabric of his trench coat rustling as he walked away.

Now that he as finally alone, Alistair tried to collect himself. 

How could he have been so _stupid_? He'd spent every waking moment of the past seven years aiding his brother's murderer and been none the wiser. What a fool he was not to have seen through such an obvious farce. Why would Gozaburo Kaiba have been there, risking his own neck just to congratulate some random government foot soldier on such an insignificant victory? 

Had Kaiba Corporation even been involved at all? Or had Dartz been behind everything? And for what? How many deaths had Dartz caused just to get to him? A jolt of adrenaline unrelated to his hunger tore through him. Did the fact that Dartz had killed Mikey to get him alone make his brother's death his own fault?  

No! No, he hadn't asked to become involved with DOMA! He hadn't asked for any of it! All he'd ever wanted was to be able to protect Mikey, and Dartz had taken advantage of his devotion to make a soldier out of him. All he was guilty of was being naive. 

He tried to relax back against the scratchy hospital pillows. 

For the time being, none of that mattered. He couldn't allow himself to fall victim to his own guilt and sadness now that the ground had shifted or he'd be doomed to repeat the same mistake again. What it was that Kaiba wanted from him was unclear, but he needed to keep a cool head if he was going to find out.  

* * *

Mokuba absently swiped back and forth through the apps on his phone when the news being whispered through shoddy speakers on the lobby's television failed to hold his attention. A large wall of glass overlooked the street, but in the middle of the night there wasn't much to see beyond the black outlines of the trees nor much to do beyond marking time as the lights in the rooms of the hotel across the street went out one by one. He was bored, and the plastic seats were uncomfortable, but his brother had told him to wait there, so he had nothing better to do than ruminate on the crazy events of the past month and what they had revealed.  

He knew Seto didn't agree, and in fairness, he didn't completely understand it himself, but whether fabricated or not, Alistair's story had moved him. He knew, of course, what kind of company theirs had been under their step-father; that had been why Seto wanted to take over. But it had seemed so cut and dry to him; oust the evil leader, replace him with a hero, and then everything immediately gets better. Being told by Alistair point blank that they benefited from Kaiba blood money had made him realize that by virtue of building on top of Gozaburo's Kaiba Corporation they were indeed culpable for the lives he had ruined. 

His eye was drawn back to the TV by the mention of the American KC headquarters. He winced at the footage of the building as the camera panned around to show the full impact of the destruction. It was lucky the power had been completely knocked out before Seto and Yugi had crashed the Blue Eyes jet so that early the morning before, a private crew had been able to quietly remove the wreck, leaving everyone else baffled by what could have caused the damage in the first place. It would be expensive to repair, but at least there was no chance of anyone accusing Seto of having been involved and compromising their insurance claim. At least, that was what Mokuba had gotten out of his brother's hushed discussion with Roland. 

Mokuba shifted his attention to the lump in the pocket of his jacket, carelessly crumpled on the seat beside him. When Alistair had pressed his brother's ruined action figure into his hands, Mokuba had looked into his eyes and felt an inexplicable connection to him. Mokuba had understood in a way Seto hadn't that once they'd crossed paths, Alistair's fate rested with them.  

Dartz himself had, in Seto's opinion, washed their hands of that responsibility by admitting to being the one who'd manufactured Alistair's brother's death, but to Mokuba that was an irrelevant detail, and he still felt the weight of knowing their company had exploited the unrest across the border and indirectly caused the deaths of thousands of civilians. He and Seto couldn't undo the damage wrought by their step-father, nor disentangle themselves from the way they had benefited from it, but they could save one person. They could save Alistair. 

When it had seemed like Seto's mood had mellowed out as much as it was going to for the foreseeable future, Mokuba had acted on his own sense of morality, and broached the possibility of following through on helping Alistair back to his feet. 

Predictably, Seto had been less than willing to see eye to eye on the matter. 

"He tried to kill us and take over my company!" Seto had snapped "And besides, I only promised to help him _if_ he managed to defeat me, but if you recall, _I_ defeated _him_. I owe him nothing."

Mokuba had then tried appealing to his brother's soft spot for the bond between siblings. "He lost his brother," he'd reminded him. "If anything ever happened to you, I'd do some pretty crazy things too. We can't judge him for that, especially when he doesn't know the truth."  

Seto had finally agreed to write the DOMA member a check as compensation, but when Mokuba had pointed out how callous that would be, Seto had demanded a better solution. 

"I was thinking we should offer him a job and get him Domino citizenship. He's obviously pretty smart if he was able to hack our system, right? And he's a pilot. We could really set him up to have a good life here." 

At that, Seto had actually laughed at him. "Do you think it's that easy? Even if I wanted to help him, which I don't, and even if I could find a way to forge some documents, all it would take is for him to get a parking ticket for it to fall apart. He can't pass as being from Domino; the cops will just be looking for an excuse to run his passport, and then what? He'd end up getting deported and I would have wasted my time." 

"Maybe," Mokuba had agreed even as an idea started to form in his mind. He'd never considered himself as being particularly sly, but as Seto's younger brother the trait, to lesser extent, had inevitably rubbed off on him. "But there is at least one good solution to that problem." He and Seto had stared at each other, and he'd seen in his brother's eyes that he understood. 

"No," he'd answered flatly. 

"You know Trudy would do it if she knew him," Mokuba pointed out. "And we have so much space at our house; you'd never even have to talk to him if you didn't want to."  

Seto'd stared at his younger brother incredulously. "What kind of fantasy world do you think we're living in, Mokuba? He's not some stray you can tame and make a pet out of; he's a lunatic who tried to crash our plane into the side of a mountain!"

"You sent Yugi's grandfather to the hospital because he wouldn't sell you a trading card!"

For one moment, Seto had looked stunned, then he'd set his jaw and balled his hands into fists. "That was different," he'd managed through clenched teeth, not meeting his brother's eyes. "Why do you care so much?" Seto'd demanded. "We know Yugi better than this guy and you've never asked me to open our doors for him. Not that I ever would..."

It had been time for Mokuba to play his trump card. "He reminds me of Noa, and we never got the chance to help him." As he'd expected, Seto had unwillingly relented. 

"Understand that I find this naive to the point of recklessness, and that even if you're right and he's harmless, I'm still going to have to deal with his mouth which I'm not looking forward to. The only reason I'm even entertaining this insanity is that I believe in keeping my enemies close. I don't have time to constantly wonder when he'll show up again. But if he so much as looks at me sideways, I'm pulling the plug on all of this."

So now here they were.

Mokuba settled on playing a game of online Capsule Monsters as he waited. 

Capsule Monsters on single player mode turned out to be just as boring as flipping through his apps, and after two games, he'd started to cast around for something else to do when the sound of the door swinging open caused him to look up. 

Seto stood in the doorway with Alistair, who'd seen fit to throw his black trench coat on over the top of his crop top, standing behind him looking resigned. 

"Come on, Mokuba, we're leaving. And you'll be happy to know this ingrate has deigned to come with us."

Behind Seto's back, Alistair flared his nostrils, but said nothing.

* * *

The ride from the hospital to the company jet was a tense one. Seto had driven with Mokuba riding shotgun, leaving Alistair to sit in the back, shooting glares in his direction at regular intervals over the seat. Mokuba had suggested listening to the radio and had even reached out to turn it on, but a look from his brother stopped him and he sank back into his seat.

Though he was careful to maintain a mask of cool detachment, Alistair spent the first part of the drive working through the reality of being at Kaiba's mercy. Just getting a lift back to Domino was distasteful enough; he couldn't imagine how it'd feel to take on more of a debt of gratitude.   

 _Back to Domino..._  Alistair repeated the phrase silently and shook himself. _As though I belong there._

"I don't want to go to Domino," he said, suddenly feeling claustrophobic despite the luxury car's spacious back seat. He even wrapped his hand around the door handle as though meaning to leap out of the car onto the crowded highway.

Seto didn't bother turning around. "No? Where would you like to go? Back to where you came from? Be my guest, but you'll have to find your own ride there since I don't feel like getting blown up."

" _Shut up_!" Alistair snarled, and even Mokuba felt his jaw drop at the cruelness of the jab. "How dare you say that to me? I changed my mind; I don't want _any_ charity from you. Pull over; I'm getting out."

"No, you're not." Seto was quickly growing annoyed by Alistair's theatricality. 

"Yes, I am. Pull over. I'd rather get hit by a bus than stay in this car with you."

"Is that so? I was under the impression you actually had a brain underneath all of the nonsense you love spouting. My mistake."

"You think you're better than me, don't you?" Alistair's fingers twitched, eager to wrap around Kaiba's throat from behind. But he couldn't. It might be worth dying for if he could take Kaiba out, but Mokuba was innocent. Alistair wondered if Kaiba knowingly used his brother as a shield. _Probably_.

"I don't think anything about you," Seto sniffed. "That would imply that you're worth thinking about at all."

That wasn't true. Seto had thought a lot about Alistair since their first duel at Duelist Kingdom. He found Alistair fascinating. Why someone who was smart enough to override his security system would waste their time on something as meaningless as spying on him Seto had no idea. Alistair could have trashed the mainframe if he'd wanted to, could have made millions for himself selling any number of their designs to rival companies, could have made millions more forcing Seto to buy his own company back--a myriad of lucrative and damaging things. But he hadn't. He'd just watched.

It should have been creepy, and to a certain degree it was. Alistair had said he knew 'every detail' of his life. Did that mean he'd been spying on him at home too? The thought prompted Seto to briefly rest his hand on his wrist as he drove. No, he decided, Alistair would have used that against him if he knew.

"Sit back and shut up," he told Alistair with a glance in the rear-view mirror. "I don't expect any gratitude from someone as obviously boorish as you, but keep your mouth shut. And stop acting like you're too righteous to accept help from me because that's stupid. There's nothing noble about throwing your life away." This time when Seto looked back at Alistair, he caught his momentary look of surprise before it was hidden beneath petulance.

"Whatever," Alistair mumbled sourly. "But don't talk about my country like that again." He crossed his arms and turned to look out the window. _Nothing noble about throwing my life away, huh? As if he'd care one way or the other._

In the front seat, Mokuba caught his brother's eye and raised his eyebrows in exasperation as though to say: 'why would you goad him like that?' Seto frowned and looked away which Mokuba knew meant he didn't have an answer.

* * *

 After boarding the plane, Seto decided to take a nap and retreated to his section of the massive aircraft, leaving Mokuba with Alistair who he'd decided was docile enough to be trusted around his brother. But just in case Mokuba's childishly trusting nature was rubbing off on him, Seto told his bodyguard, Saito, to keep an eye on things.

Mokuba took the opportunity to give Alistair Mikey's Dino Dude back. As soon as he laid eyes on the action figure and had it placed gently in his hands, Alistair was hit by a wave of sadness he tried his hardest to hide from Mokuba.

"Thank you," he whispered, hugging the ruined toy to his chest before gently stowing it in an inside pocket of his trench coat.

"I'm so sorry about what happened to you and your family," Mokuba said sincerely. "I can't imagine what that must have been like."

The fact that a kid as thoughtful and even-tempered as Mokuba could be related to a bastard like Kaiba was inconceivable. And just like that, Alistair had his answer. "This was your idea, wasn't it?" Mokuba looked taken aback, but Alistair was certain he was right. Mokuba, whose humanity had somehow been preserved, had felt morally obligated to do something for him, and had managed to guilt Kaiba into agreeing. "Never mind. Thank you for saving this for me."

"Of course. Look, Alistair," Mokuba shifted uncomfortably in one of the plane's plush seats. "I know Seto can come across like someone who doesn't really care, and he has a bad habit of being...blunt, but he was just as touched by your story as I was."

Alistair snorted derisively. Kaiba, touched? Not likely. 

"He's not as coldhearted as everyone thinks he is." Mokuba looked at him so imploringly, and reminded him so much of Mikey, that Alistair regretted being so harsh about the one person the kid had. He didn't trust Kaiba, but his sibling was someone he felt he could.

"What are you planning on doing for me anyway?" he asked.

"So Seto didn't tell you…" Mokuba couldn't prevent himself from rolling his eyes. "Well, we have a spare bedroom at the house that you're welcome to, and we can help you get a job too." He started to go on to promise Alistair a passport, but stopped himself short. They couldn't promise that yet.

"You'd really do that for me?" Alistair's disbelief was evident and it occurred to Mokuba that he'd never been shown kindness before."Why? You have every reason to hate me."

"Not really," Mokuba disagreed with a small frown. "You were being manipulated by Dartz; that wasn't your fault. I should know: I've gotten the short end of the manipulation stick myself more times than I care to count, and so has Seto." 

Alistair had his own opinions on the subject, but seeing as Mokuba had proven himself an ally, he was keen not to argue with him even if he balked at the notion of Kaiba being manipulated when he was so clearly the puppet master. 

Also apparently eager to change the subject, Mokuba shyly asked if Alistair was up to a game of Capsule Monsters.  


	2. The Past Lives On

_I see the streets burn every time I fall asleep._

_I'm losing all my sanity._

_I can't hide from the voice that speaks inside of me."_

~ _Street Dreams_ , Hollywood Undead

**The Past Lives On**

      Alistair was used to the world reflecting his feelings of inner turmoil by being in a constant state of chaos. People scattering through the city as randomly as rolling marbles, cars jerking along overcrowded streets honking in frustration, babies crying, dogs barking, everyone yelling. Even the landscape of San Francisco had seemed to undulate like a restless snake. The chaos had suited him. In the confusion he'd gone unnoticed, and this atmosphere of neglect had extended to his own feelings as well. Who had time to reflect on emotions as complex and cold as guilt while they were being jostled at McDonald's? No, the constant friction of the city had kept him in a state of heated hyper-vigilance that more often than not had manifested in snippy arguments with strangers. 

 When that fire sputtered he'd counted on Valon to stoke it. Admittedly, Valon had been more boisterous than he'd really been annoying, but Alistair had needed to feel annoyed, so out of necessity, his colleague's happy-go-lucky demeanor had grated on him. And like the city around them, Valon had never seemed to stop moving. He talked enough for three people and in his blathering he'd paced back and forth in the living room he, Raphael, and Alistair had shared, slowly wearing a path across the cheap carpeting.   

 But on the jet existed only silence. 

Alistair rolled over on the built-in cot one of the crew members had directed him to. Through the small round window, he could see lights pulsating gently on the wing of the plane. He stared at them, willing them to hypnotize him into feeling drowsy, but his mind refused to allow it. 

 He rolled over again, frowning. How could he possibly live under the same roof as  _Seto Kaiba_?

 Take his money? Alright. Accept a job from him? Distasteful but ultimately valuable enough not to turn his nose up at. But _live_ with him? Sit across from him at breakfast and eat crumpets as though there had never been bad blood between them?  

And for what, a better life? He could scarcely conceptualize what that would even mean. He'd initially thought that perhaps he could use this unexpected good fortune to live for not only himself, but Mikey too. But what good would any of this really do his brother?

His brother was gone.

His parents were gone.

He'd had a purpose, but if Dartz had really lied, that purpose, and his conviction that paradise was achievable were gone too. So really, all he had left was the benefit of living for himself. 

_And what's the point of that?_ he thought bitterly.   

* * *

 The data he'd been parsing through for the past hour had begun to swim before his eyes, but Seto'd already absorbed the bulk of what he'd needed. Dartz's death had solved almost as many problems as it had created, and within twenty-four hours of his demise, Kaiba Corp was his again. But although Seto had easily bought the company back, Dartz managed to live on in the damage he'd caused. 

The tug of war over the company had long since left a number of investors wary as first Seto had wrested the company from Gozaburo, only to be shoved sideways by Pegasus and the Big Five, and now, Paradias. Even Seto had to admit that from their point of view, his track record as a leader was shoddy, and he was determined never to let them down again. But that was going to take a lot of work.

He leaned back into the buttery leather seat and closed his eyes, hoping a few minutes of rest would cure him of his weariness. Almost immediately, he heard muffled footsteps and turned in time to see Alistair, whose meandering gait belayed aimless wandering. He'd abandoned his jacket, Seto noticed, his cutoff tank top leaving little to the imagination. The shadows cast by the moonlight accentuated the contours of his trim stomach, where Seto found his eyes lingering, and he quickly flicked his gaze up to Alistair's face. His frown as he gazed out the window was pensive, and Seto wondered how he felt. He'd lost everything, a feeling Seto understood all too well. He'd had Mokuba, though, as Alistair had pointed out, so that even at his lowest, he'd never been alone. 

There was longing in Alistair's expression as he continued to stare out at the blackness of the night sky, and in spite of logic telling him otherwise, Seto pitied him.  

"Do you want to jump?"

Alistair started and whipped around. "Kaiba," he growled, anger hardening his features once more. 

"I asked you a question: do you want to jump?" Seto shut his laptop, but made no move to stand. "End it all? Do you think you'd be reunited with your family if you did?" He tensed when he saw Alistair clench his jaw, and wondered if he'd gone too far. But Alistair apparently had better self-control than he would have expected, because he stayed where he was. "Or are you just feeling stupid because you picked the losing team and want to save what's left of your dignity by refusing my help?"

"What do you care how I feel or what I do?" Alistair demanded. "Wouldn't it be easier for you if I just disappeared?"

When Alistair's eyes revealed confusion rather than the hatred Seto'd expected, he faltered, suddenly unsure why he'd felt compelled to intervene in Alistair's moment of catharsis.   

"Just go back to bed," he said finally. "And put some stock in your own life because no one else is going to do it for you." 

Alistair stared at him a moment before snapping out a retort that even he seemed to know was weak before returning to the back of the plane. 

Only after he was sure Alistair was gone did Seto relax his posture, leaning more comfortably back against the chair. Why on earth had he done that? Alistair was right: he had no reason to care about the other man's feelings beyond how they impacted him. 

_This was a mistake_ , he thought. It was a precarious situation, taking Alistair in, and he didn't like that. It was easy to blame his brother's sense of altruism for the DOMA member's continued presence in his life, but Seto knew that even Mokuba's big blue puppy-dog eyes weren't enough to convince him to do anything he didn't want to. It was uncomfortably connected to how he'd felt after their second duel. He'd been angry, naturally, that Alistair had put his and Mokuba's lives at risk, but even so, there'd been something else too. And after crash-landing the plane he'd known there was no reason to pull his opponent off the wreck; Roland or anyone else could have done dealt with that. But he'd felt obligated. No, not obligated. Something else. 

Before that day, he'd never held anyone but Mokuba, usually at moments when his brother had fallen asleep on long car rides or in front of his television and needed to be carried to bed. He'd thought nothing of it; it was what he was supposed to do. Carrying Alistair had been different. He could remember with clarity how it had felt to heft Alistair into his arms, his head lolling back against Seto's shoulder. He'd been so warm. That was what Seto remembered best: the warmth of another person's body against his. He remembered too thinking about how different Alistair looked when his face wasn't warped with anger. With his silky hair falling across high cheekbones, and the gentle curve of his cupid's bow, Seto almost could have described him as pretty. 

As though that mattered.

He leaned forward in his seat and reopened his laptop. He'd keep his distance, and hopefully be rid of Alistair for good by the end of the summer as long as Trudy played her part. No need to make it any more personal than that. 

* * *

 Alistair sat down hard on the cot without bothering to turn the light on. Had his feelings of defeat really been so obvious? He gritted his teeth, his hands gripping the plush comforter draped messily across the cot.

It was what he got for letting his guard down, he supposed; he should have realized he wasn't alone. It was strange, though, what Kaiba had said. If he'd seen how he'd felt, why would he lean into it? Kaiba was known to be impudent when it suited him, but this had felt personal, like Kaiba had really wanted to rile him up. But why? 

Whatever his motivation, and Alistair was loathe to admit it, Kaiba had a point. He wasn't sure how Kaiba had known what he'd been thinking, or if the remarks had been shots in the dark, but either way, Alistair had felt certain in that moment that he didn't in fact want to give up. Even if it was for no other reason than to get the chance to prove that while Dartz may have been corrupt, there was still value in the ideals he'd preached, Alistair decided he wanted to live. 

As though the thought had shaken loose whatever had been blocking him from falling asleep, Alistair found himself yawning, his eyelids at last starting to droop. Gratefully, he dropped down onto his side, once more facing the pulsing lights on the wing. At long last, he slept, the crystal around his neck gleaming a bright turquoise in the moonlight.

* * *

  _Ash and fine particles of shrapnel fell to the ground like the snow of a malevolent dystopia. Alistair had fallen to his knees as flakes of it settled into his hair and clothes and his tears of shock traced dusty tracks along his cheeks._

_"I can help you, Alistair." The voice was calm, soothing. Alistair wanted very much to be wrapped in it, transported away from the ruins of the camp. To be held by the person to whom the voice belonged and told that everything was going to be ok. Maybe they could give his family back and they could all go home._

_He wiped the grime out of his eyes and forced himself to his feet so that he could face whatever force had called out to him so mellifluously._

_They were beautiful. Resplendent in pure white robes that shone against the grey and black of the landscape, and with powder blue hair that fell almost to the figure's feet. A deep teal pendant swung against their chest and seemed to glow with an inner light that left Alistair transfixed._

_"Who are you?" Alistair asked so softly he could barely hear himself._

_"I'm a friend," the figure said. "A friend who wants to see justice served." The figure approached, their steps crunching against the rocky soil. "I know who took your family away from you, my child."_

_"Who?" Alistair felt his entire body tense in the moments that followed. Whoever it was, he would make them pay!_

_"You did."  The figure smiled gently when Alistair gasped out a denial. "You were destined to be your family's undoing, Alistair." They were no longer in the desert, but in the sacred chamber where a thousand stone snakes glared down at him as Alistair cowered against the floor. "You wanted to be the one to make the fighting stop," Dartz went on, and the Orichalcos stone around his neck glittered. "You wanted to be the hero."_

_"No, I didn't, I swear!"_

_"Don't you think it's time you accepted the truth? " Kaiba scowled at him from across the plane. "As a brother it was your duty to protect him at all costs, and you failed, Alistair! Your little brother was killed because of_ you _!"_

_"That's not true!" Alistair shouted even as he felt on the verge of throwing up. "It's_ your _fault! He's dead because of you, not me! I did everything I could! I--." But it wasn't Kaiba staring him down anymore; it was Mikey. His mouth had fallen open in surprise, his grey eyes wide with betrayal._

  _Alistair dropped his cards, barely noticing as they fluttered to the ground, and ran to where Mikey stood against the dull green side of the tank. Just as he reached him, a soldier grabbed Mikey under his arms to hoist him inside._

_"No!" Alistair lunged forward to yank Mikey back, but his brother turned to ash in his arms. Only the ash wasn't black, it was red. And it poured over his face, his chest, pooling thickly into the dust._

* * *

 "Alistair! Wake up!" 

Alistair jarred awake and fell off the cot onto the plush carpet, one leg tangled up in the blanket. He squinted against the light and tried to swallow his heart even as he began to realize that none of it had been real. Just another nightmare.Then his eyes landed on Kaiba, standing in the doorway with one hand still on the light switch. It was an odd feeling of déjà vu, but he was too upset to focus on it for long. 

"What do _you_ want?" he snapped, aggressively wiping several tears off his face with the back of his hand before yanking his leg free of the blanket and getting back on the cot. 

If Kaiba was rankled by being so addressed, he hid it well. "You were yelling your head off and someone needed to shut you up before you woke up the whole plane." His tone was neutral and, to Alistair, quite grounding. As the silence between them lengthened after Kaiba gave his explanation, he began to feel a relieving disconnect between the logic of his dream and reality; he had no reason to feel guilty.

"Go away." Alistair looked sullenly down at the floor, hating that he was grateful to Kaiba for waking him up. 

" _Hmph_." But to his relief, Kaiba flicked the light back off and left without comment. 

He'd thought it would be impossible to fall back asleep again, but as always after a nightmare, Alistair in fact fell asleep almost immediately. 

* * *

The plane landed without incident early the next afternoon and a sleek black limo came to pick them up at the airport. Seto ordered the driver to first take them to Kaiba Corp headquarters, wait outside, then take them home. When they arrived at the immense skyscraper that dominated the landscape of downtown Domino, Seto and Mokuba got out of the car while Seto gave his brother instructions for how to direct Roland.

"Stay here," Seto ordered Alistair when the latter moved to follow them.  

Alistair shot him a look, but slid back across the seat with a slight pout. He had no particular interest in seeing the inner workings of Kaiba Corporation, but he didn't appreciate being told what to do. 

As he sat idly staring out the window at the nearest glass panels making up the bulk of the building, Alistair realized the driver was looking at him, and the sulkiness he'd been feeling evaporated.

"I'm sorry," he apologized, meeting the driver's eyes over the seat. He uncrossed his arms and held out a hand. "I'm Alistair."

"Edwin Jones," the driver replied, visibly surprised that a passenger would speak to him; Seto and Mokuba hadn't given any sign that they even knew he existed except to bark orders at him in years.

They exchanged small smiles. 

With the ice broken, Alistair felt obliged to strike up a conversation, but couldn't think of anything else to say beyond asking Jones how long he'd been working for the Kaibas. He discovered with some amazement that the driver had worked for the Kaiba family for fifteen years and was curious where that loyalty came from, but thought it might be impolite to ask. 

Just as their small talk had dwindled down and Alistair had gone back to looking out the window, Kaiba and Mokuba returned. Kaiba was scowling, but as far as Alistair knew that could mean that his business had gone as planned just as easily as it could mean the opposite. Without saying anything to Jones, the brothers climbed back into the car which glided back out of the parking lot and onto the highway. 

"I think I'm gonna go to bed when we get home," Mokuba said with a yawn. 

"You shouldn't," Kaiba admonished him. "Just drink a coffee and try not to sleep until you normally would or your jet-lag will be worse in the morning." 

"I hate coffee, though," Mokuba replied with a slight whine. "I don't get how you can drink so much of it. Do you like coffee, Alistair?" 

Alistair answered that he didn't. It happened to be the truth, but it suited him to be contrary. 

" _Hmph_." Kaiba crossed his arms. "Do whatever you want, but keep in mind that you have school tomorrow." 

Mokuba spent the next few minutes trying to convince his brother that it wouldn't be so bad to just take a nap, but Kaiba largely seemed to tune him out, instead pulling out his phone and spending the commute answering emails and catching up on memos. 

For his part, Alistair avoided looking at either of them and watched the other cars flash past. This gradually gave way when Jones pulled off the highway and entered the affluent suburbs. He knew where they were from having looked on maps and even who many of the families were that lived in the tacky McMansions that had been crushed into the outskirts of the classier homes. 

Unsurprisingly, the Kaiba residence was the biggest and most lavish of all.

It sat atop an attractive slope, the top floor and roof just visible over a high wall that ran around the immense property. The wall had stood since the erection of the house over two centuries prior, it's bricks dark with age, but immaculate in upkeep, giving the estate a forbidding gravitas. 

A galvanized wrought iron gate swung inward to allow the limo access to the driveway which wound around ornamental flowerbeds bursting with well-tended African marigolds. The house itself was evocative of a small European palace. A wide double doorway arched under six imposing stone pillars above which a balcony stretched around the facade like an ornate iron headband . 

Alistair was inclined to crane his neck upwards to take in the full effect, but refused to display how impressive he found it, reminding himself of the true cost of such decadence. In any case, he'd seen pictures of the mansion before; he knew what it looked like without gawking like a tourist. He glanced at Kaiba, who was stowing his phone back in his jacket pocket. Everyone knew the Kaibas had been wealthy for centuries, but it had only been after the introduction of new blood that that status had been elevated to a level far outstripping anything Gozaburo could ever have hoped to achieve. But despite being the one to singlehandedly add the name of Kaiba to the ranks of the richest families in the world, the opulence, in Alistair's opinion, didn't suit him somehow. Kaiba so belonged to the world of cutting edge technology that imagining him walking the halls of the ancestral mansion seemed almost anachronistic. Surely Kaiba knew that too, so why would he stay here when he could live anywhere he wanted? 

When the car finally stopped at the door, Alistair thanked Jones for the ride before following Kaiba and Mokuba out of the car. 

"Come with me," Kaiba told Alistair once the doors had closed behind them. "And Mokuba: if you can stay awake, once I'm finished, you can show him around; I don't have time to deal with that." 

Alistair would have shot him a look had he not been distracted by the scale Blue Eyes White Dragon statue in the middle of the foyer, growling silently at everyone entering the house.

The notion of giving a tour seemed to appeal to Mokuba because he blinked away his sleepiness and announced that in the meantime he'd be in his room before running up one of two grand staircases to the second floor and disappearing down the west wing hallway. 

Following after at a much slower pace, Alistair walked behind Kaiba up the stairs. Since this time there was no one to see him looking, he was able to take in the details.  

He was struck first by the sheer lack of warmth. The walls were white, the carpet, black, and the furniture heavy and modern. The few paintings featured on the walls were severe swirls and dashes of red.

They reached the top of the stairs, and Seto swept into his home office, located just beyond an elaborate mahogany balustrade. He'd admittedly expected Alistair to be impressed. He considered his office at KC headquarters to be purely functional, but he'd expended a lot of effort decorating this room in the weeks following his step-father's funeral. He'd wasted no time throwing out Gozaburo's chess trophies and replacing them with his own chess and Duel Monsters prizes which now shone in the afternoon sun pouring in through the windows. A crystal Blue Eyes White Dragon statue stood glittering in the far corner like a sentry. 

But Alistair seemed unimpressed by both the dragon and the shelves of awards, and threw himself onto the couch with the same unflappable petulance he'd displayed since waking up in the hospital. He put his feet up on the coffee table and quirked an eyebrow as if daring Seto to call him gauche. Seto felt his nails digging into his palms, but was unwilling to give Alistair the satisfaction of seeing his irritation, and went to sit at his desk. He hauled his briefcase onto the gleaming surface, and quickly unlocked it, snapping it open and rummaging around for a moment before selecting a piece of paper, shutting the case, and placing it back on the floor. Setting the handwritten document in the middle of the desk, he whipped a pen out of the stash next to a container of his business cards and poised it over the paper.

"As far as I can tell, your skills are: piloting planes and jets, and dueling. Anything else?"

"I know SQL, Java, and C++," Alistair added smugly. "And Python." 

Seto raised a skeptical eyebrow, but he actually admired that the DOMA member had such a skill set. Granted, he didn't know how well Alistair could code, but even a minimal knowledge of the languages would be enough to build on. He needed Alistair as far away from him as possible, though, not in the same building, so he ignored the addendum. 

"It isn't hard to see that your ability to pilot planes and jets is your most marketable skill. And more importantly, one that will keep you out of my way." He circled the word 'pilot'. "Do you have a license?" Unsurprisingly, Alistair shook his head. "I didn't think so. Could you pass a written aviation exam?" He half expected Alistair to tell him he couldn't read, but instead he nodded. "I'll give them a call so you can take the test and start logging flight hours. Once you have your license I'll test you out myself, and if you're good enough you can pilot one of the company jets." As far as Seto was concerned that was the end of it, and he prepared to move to the next order of business, but Alistair had sat up straighter in indignation, his feet sliding off the coffee table and landing heavily on the floor. 

"You can't just tell me what I'm going to do with my life!" 

"What, you have a better idea?" Seto snapped.

"Well, no, not right this second," Alistair began with chagrin. "But--."

"But nothing. I'll make the call tomorrow and you can take the test next week." Seto stabbed a second bullet point with the tip of his pen. "Now, while you're staying here there are rules I expect you to follow. Most of them are matters of common courtesy, but just so we're clear I'll spell them out for you. You'll be in the bedroom at the end of the hall. I couldn't care less what you do there, but don't make it difficult for my housekeeper to clean up after you. 

On weekdays, Mokuba has tutoring from ten to four in the library. Don't bother them. Breakfast is at nine, lunch is at one, and dinner's at seven. On Saturdays breakfast is at ten, lunch is at two, and dinner's at seven-thirty. Our housekeeper has Sundays off so we order in or go out whenever we get hungry.

The house has twenty-four hour security. I've made them aware of you, but if you go sneaking around outside in the middle of the night they'll probably shoot you."

"Why would I be sneaking around in the middle of the night?" 

"Additionally," Seto continued over the top of him. "There are security cameras--."

"I already know all about your security here," Alistair cut him off. 

"Is that so?" Seto snapped after recovering from his surprise at having been interrupted. "Do tell." 

With a roll of his eyes, Alistair rattled off the basics of the Kaiba manor security system. "But honestly," he concluded. "All someone would have to do is get past the cameras on the north side since it's the least protected, and as long as they kept walking in a straight line, they could sneak all the way up to the house, scale the wall, and get in through the balcony since there's a tree branch blocking one of the camera's angles."

Seto's mouth formed a thin line. "How do you know all that?" 

"Surprised your security isn't as good as you thought it was?" Alistair taunted with a smirk. "My original plan was to break into your house and force you to duel me here, but then I realized that hitting you where it really hurt meant stirring up some bad memories," he concluded with zeal. "And I knew you couldn't resist a challenge from Pegasus." 

"Would it have been worth it to you?" Kaiba asked with unexpected calm. "Would defeating me really have made you feel better?"

"Of course," Alistair answered without hesitation. "The soul of my enemy going to feed the beast that would bring about the world's rebirth; why wouldn't that be satisfying?" 

"Ok, let's operate under the false assumption that you would have been able to beat me," Seto began with an amused smile. "It wouldn't have changed anything for you."

"Says the one who threw an entire tournament and then blew up a tower just to prove a point to his dead father," Alistair shot back, unabashed. 

Seto felt his pulse quicken. The only person who was supposed to know about his intentions behind Battle City was Mokuba. "How could you possibly know that?" 

Alistair looked him directly in his eyes, gray meeting blue.

"I told you: I know everything about you."

Alistair's stare was so intense that eventually it was Seto who found himself looking away, muttering:

"You don't know anything about me." 

Alistair shrugged a shoulder, a triumphant smile playing around his mouth. 

In an offhand, hypothetical sort of way, Seto had wondered what would happen if he ever met someone he couldn't intimidate, but with the reality sitting in his office taunting him, he wished he hadn't.

"You know something, Alistair," Seto said, rubbing his temples "I don't get you. You hate me despite knowing that I never did anything to you. Even when you thought it was my stepfather who was responsible for your family being killed, you knew that that had nothing to do with me. If anything you should be thanking me for the fact that we're getting ready for the release of our new duel disk and not our new tank. You and I are on the same side!"

If Alistair was phased by the assertion, he chose not to acknowledge it and continued to look at him with a level of distaste that made Seto more uncomfortable than nettled. It shouldn't have. It was hardly unusual to be looked at that way by people, but he found himself wanting to prove he didn't deserve that level of dislike. Not from him.

"Do you honestly think I should be grateful you don't run a weapons manufacturing company anymore?" Alistair asked, now sitting so far forward in his seat it was obvious he was one snarky comment away from leaping up. "That that makes you a better person than your father was? Because it doesn't. Why should I have any respect for someone who can't even thank his driver?" 

For a moment Seto was taken aback. Then he laughed. Alistair's problem was that he thought he was rude? That was nothing. " _That's_ what this is about? Grow up, Alistair. It's his  _job_  to drive me where I need to go; my 'thanks' are his paychecks. Do you know the last time anyone thanked  _me_  for anything? When I offered to take the kids from the local orphanage to Kaiba Land. And do you want to know why I was worthy of their thanks? Because opening the amusement park doors for free is not part of my job, it's  _extra_. It costs more money than you could ever even dream of to run a park that size for one day.  _That's_  the kind of action that warrants a 'thank you.' And so does saving the life of some jumped-up biker punk and then putting him up in your house, but I won't hold my breath." He was relieved Alistair at least had the social grace not to retort. 

He didn't like it, but as Kaiba continued to rattle off banal details of what was to become his daily routine, Alistair had to admit that even to himself the 'Kaiba is my enemy' narrative was getting a bit old. Kaiba was doing him a favor he was by no means due, and whatever else he might think of his character, that couldn't be ignored.

Finally, Kaiba seemed to run out of things to say and called Mokuba to come and collect their guest in order to show him around the rest of the house. It was only by biting down hard on his tongue that Alistair was able to stop himself from commenting on how ridiculous it was for two people to live in a house so large they had to call each other on the phone to communicate. 

In the minute or so it took for Mokuba to arrive, Alistair felt Kaiba's eyes on him and looked up from a book lying on the coffee table that he'd decided was written in German. 

"What?" 

To his surprise, Kaiba looked flustered, though he quickly returned to his usual facade of indifference. "You need to get new clothes," he explained,  "You can't go to the academy dressed like that." 

"I'll dress however I damn well please," Alistair snapped at him with unexplainable embarrassment, self-consciously tugging at the hem of his shirt.  

* * *

Mokuba seemed to have completely shaken off his jet lag in the time since they'd gotten back to the house, because as he gave Alistair the grand tour, he showed no signs of fatigue. Indeed, since meeting Alistair outside his brother's office, he hadn't stopped talking. Alistair couldn't decide if talking was what was fueling the younger Kaiba brother or if his chatter stemmed from a genuine interest in imparting the history of the estate and its décor. 

Alistair knew from the mansion's blueprints that it was laid out in an uneven horseshoe, but actually walking the identical white halls, distinguishable only by the subtle differences in the art they harbored, made him feel like they were going in unsettling circles. In contrast, Mokuba seemed relaxed as he offered cursory views of each room. They passed by the dining room, library, swimming pool, and drawing room in quick succession, and it occurred to Alistair that for Mokuba, no one part of the house was worth pausing in because he had no concept of an indoor pool or library being noteworthy. 

_What have I gotten myself into?_ he wondered as the younger boy casually pointed out the ballroom.  

The ballroom was the crown jewel of the Kaiba estate. Slabs of black and white marble gleamed in the crisscrossing afternoon sunshine streaming in through a domed skylight high above where they stood. From turn of the century balls to the many corporate parties thrown by Gozaburo Kaiba, the hall had seen its share of decadent soirees over the years, but that had all stopped with Kaiba's rise to head of the household, and was now only filled for the traditional ball hosted each New Year's. It was undeniably impressive, but so impersonal in its grandeur it was off-putting. After all, this wasn't the centerpiece of a hotel, but of a home, and yet, neither here nor anywhere else that Mokuba had shown him, had Alistair seen any sign of personality. If it existed anywhere at all, he assumed it had been carefully folded away. Out of sight. As though even in their own house, individuality was something to be kept private. 

Eventually, they returned upstairs to the room designated as Alistair's for the course of his stay. More of a moderately sized apartment than a room, it featured a four-poster bed with red sheets and hangings. A wide stone balcony overlooked the grounds behind airy French doors that someone had tilted open to allow air to flow into a room that for all Alistair knew no one had used in years. As in the rest of the house, the furniture was of a heavy dark wood with jutting edges that seemed designed to catch a person's side or toes as they crossed the room in the dark.  

"I called ahead to have Trudy stock the bathroom so you'd have a toothbrush and shampoo and all that stuff." Mokuba started to fidget and Alistair realized he was waiting for him to say something.

"Thanks."

"If you need anything else—."

"Tell Trudy. Yeah, your brother gave me the low-down on how things work around here." He produced the paper he'd gotten from Kaiba out of one of his jacket's many inside pockets.

Mokuba looked it over and started laughing."This is such classic Seto; he runs his life using lists. It's really funny. Don't tell him I told you, but he has a list up in his bathroom about the order he does things in the morning with sub-points explaining why." He laughed again and even Alistair had to crack a smile at the thought of Kaiba standing in the bathroom in a pair of Blue Eyes White Dragon themed boxer shorts poring over a list explaining how to brush his teeth. 

"Oh, and I forgot to tell you; we recovered your motorcycle from Paradias headquarters and had it transported here from the plane. It's in the garage if you ever want to ride."

"You got my bike?" Alistair asked blankly.

"Yeah. To be honest, I forgot all about it, but Seto remembered and told Roland to have someone pick it up on our way back."

Alistair knew that he was expected to express some sort of thanks for Kaiba's thoughtfulness, but he couldn't stomach it, so he changed the subject. "You have a game room, right?"

Seeing that his brother's act of consideration wasn't enough to convince Alistair of his goodness, Mokuba followed their guest's lead.

The game room connected to Mokuba's bedroom and boasted all the major gaming consoles and several giant screens as well as an elaborate, classic pinball machine. Several bookshelves lining the back wall were filled with easily over two hundred titles. And of course there were duel disks; the different official incarnations and one that looked custom-made.

Alistair hadn't ever really played video games or tabletop games of any kind besides Duel Monsters, but he'd always wanted to, and now it seemed he'd have the chance. But there was one thing about the room that struck him as odd.

"Who uses all this stuff, just you?" he asked.

Mokuba looked wistful. "Recently, yeah. Seto and I used to play games together, but since he always wins he thinks it's boring, plus obviously he's really busy."

"Don't you have friends to play with?" 

The melancholy expression on Mokuba's face intensified. "Not really. Since I get tutored at home I don't have the opportunity to make friends. But I can't go to a regular school because it's too much of a security risk. Besides, I think most people would be too intimidated by my brother to want to hang out with me."

"Your brother seems pretty selfish to me," Alistair said at once, relishing the opportunity to badmouth Kaiba. "Always putting his life before yours."

"Oh, no! That's not what I meant by that at all!" Mokuba insisted. "Everything he's done has been to make sure I have a better time growing up than he did."

"But you aren't," Alistair pointed out. "Not if you just end up in here all day playing games by yourself. You should at least have the freedom to make friends. You're fourteen, right?" he clarified, sizing him up. While Mokuba wasn't particularly small, his large eyes set into a heart-shaped face made him appear much younger than Alistair knew him to be. "It's not like you're ten and barely know your own address, so for him to keep you under lock and key under the pretext of protection is ridiculous."

"It's just really dangerous for me to go out alone since people would try to take advantage of me," Mokuba parroted Seto automatically. "That's why I can't have friends. How would I ever know who I could really trust?" The light in Mokuba's eyes from only minutes before had been replaced by blank indifference, and Alistair could see how tired he was. How much like his brother he looked. It made him more determined than ever to nurture the younger teen's kindness. And the best way to do that would be to get him out of the house that even after less than an hour Alistair could feel leeching his spirit.  

"I disagree," he said firmly, causing Mokuba to look up at him. "There's no reason you shouldn't be able to just...just be a kid. But what do I know, I guess." He smiled ruefully. "I'm not sure I know what that means any more than he does, but you should have friends to play those games with." It tugged at his heartstrings to see Mokuba hang on his every word the same way Mikey used to, but it was nice.

"Maybe you're right," Mokuba murmured, some of the determination returning to his eyes. Then he yawned so widely his jaw popped. "Sorry, I guess I'm still pretty sleepy. But thank you for what you said." He smiled, then yawned again. "I don't care what Seto says: I'm taking a nap!" 

* * *

 After leaving Mokuba to sleep, Alistair wandered back in the direction of his room. He was trying to make sense of a three piece painting of uneven strokes of black and red when Kaiba flung open the door of his office, almost hitting him in the face. 

"What are you doing lurking around?" Kaiba asked unapologetically, straightening the collar of his turtleneck. "Trying to catch me with my pants down?"

"As if. I wasn't  _lurking_ ; Mokuba was showing me the game room."

They looked at each other a moment.

"What are you still doing standing there?" 

"I'm just waiting for you to get out of my way." Alistair could practically hear Kaiba's internal struggle between not wanting to do what he said and wanting him to go away.

"There should be a 'please' in there somewhere, but I wouldn't expect someone of your background to know that." Kaiba smirked and stepped aside.

"I'd say thank you, but I wouldn't expect someone of your background to know what that means." Alistair saw Kaiba's eyes narrow, but before he could retort, he stepped around him, the fabric of his trench coat whacking into Kaiba's leg. 

He hated to follow Kaiba's unspoken desire for him to shut himself in his room, but Alistair was happy to finally be alone. He tossed his jacket over the back of the desk chair and proceeded to empty the pockets and take stock of his things. As he pulled each item out, he set it on the surface of the desk. He had the paper Kaiba'd given him, Mikey's  _Dino Dude_  action figure, a small pair of scissors he mainly used for cutting his hair, a spool of black thread and a needle, a silver penknife, the keys to his motorcycle, a pair of sunglasses, a small amount of American currency, and the cell phone he'd used to keep in contact with Raphael and Valon that was now dead; the charger back at Paradias headquarters in San Francisco.

And that was it, everything he owned, except for his Duel Disk and deck, though he had no idea what might have happened to them, and cared even less; he'd never been attached to either of them anyway. The only two things he had that he cared about were his brother's toy and his father's pocket-knife.

With nothing better to do than check out the rest of the room before taking a shower, he wandered across the floor and opened the door to the bathroom. A sunken bathtub along one wall took up most of the space, and Alistair assumed the shower stall tucked into the far corner had been added much more recently. 

No one had bothered to mention it, but Alistair knew from the blueprints this was no guest room, but the master bedroom, and he found it strange that Kaiba hadn't claimed it after his father's suicide since he knew there had been no love lost between them.

He left the bathroom and wandered into the closet. The first thing he noticed besides that it was made up of a ridiculous number of cubbies, was his duel disk sitting on an empty shelf, deck still intact. Apparently someone had gotten it after all. There wasn't anything of interest other than that, so he turned the light off and went back to the main part of the apartment. Sinking into a black leather couch situated in front of a glass coffee table, Alistair tried to sort out what had happened to him in the span of just a few days.

Everything had happened so fast. The last seven years of his life had been leading up to his duel with Kaiba and now it was over. And what  _had_ actually happened? Where were Raphael and Valon? What happened to them after Dartz had been defeated? They had by no means been friends, but they'd been in his life longer than most people.

And now here he was, sitting in Kaiba's house, about to be put on the fast track to becoming a pilot for Kaiba Corporation. The irony in that wasn't lost on him. Granted, he had every intention of turning down Kaiba's offer; after all, he detested everything the company stood for. As soon as he had the license he intended to seek employment with another group like Dartz's. 

The leather crunched beneath him as he adjusted his position on the couch so he was staring at the high ceiling. For the time being, he'd sit back and see what happened. 

* * *

While he reclined in his home office desk chair, his elbows resting on the desk and his chin resting on his steepled fingers, Seto wondered idly if Alistair knew whose room he was staying in. Personally, he hadn't gone anywhere near the place since his stepfather's death.

When he'd conceived his plan to get Gozaburo to adopt him and his brother he'd known that Gozaburo Kaiba was a ruthless man, and that life with him would by no means be a picnic. But having a loving father hadn't been his goal; he'd known that by becoming Gozaburo's son he'd be securing Mokuba's future. And if he had it to do over again he wouldn't change a thing despite all he'd suffered because he'd finally achieved what he'd set out to do.

His life was already decided and his future had nothing in store for him but more of the same, but Mokuba had a blank slate and all the opportunity in the world to be and do anything he wanted, and Seto was content with that.

But sometimes he couldn't help but wish that there was some mystery in his future, some uncertainty to give the rest of his life meaning. As it was he felt there was really very little more he could do. He already owned and ran one of the most successful companies in the entire world, he was a top-ranked gamer, he'd traveled all over the globe, there was nothing he couldn't buy. From the outside, it was the ideal life; something to strive for. And there is certainly something to be said for having nowhere to go but up because then you have plenty of room for dreams. Seto, on the other hand, had nowhere to go but down.

For the second time that day he rested his hand on his upturned left wrist, knowing what he would see if he pushed his sleeve up. He hadn't cut since the end of the Battle City Tournament, but the scars served as a reminder of the constant threat of abject failure. 

He tore his gaze away from his wrist to look at the clock on his laptop. How could it be midnight already? He glanced over the work he'd managed to get done in the last six hours. It wasn't much, but it was a start. Suddenly tired, he shut his computer down and prepared to head to the pool to swim a couple of laps before heading to bed.

He'd managed to get halfway to his room to change when he heard it again: Alistair's cries and whimpers; the results of more nightmares, muffled by the thick door of Gozaburo's room.

Seto's immediate instinct was to ignore what he'd heard; it was nothing to do with him, and Alistair had made it clear he wanted to be left alone, but Seto couldn't do that. He gritted his teeth and turned towards his step-father's old quarters. Instantly, his heart started to race and his palms began to sweat. There was nothing he wanted to do less than go in there again. Even contemplating it conjured up horrible memories.

He was ten and had fallen asleep when he was supposed to be studying. Gozaburo had caught him and hit him across the head with a heavy book and when he'd started to cry, Gozaburo had slapped him across the face, telling him to man up, and warning him that if he caught him sleeping again before he allowed it, he'd do far worse than hit him with a book.

Alistair's sobs snapped Seto back to the present. He squared his shoulders and tentatively approached the door, cracking it open an inch or so before he lost his nerve.

"Mikey! No! Mikey!" Alistair rasped from where he was lying curled up on the couch, one hand reaching out and grasping at the air.

Seto turned the light on. "Alistair," he said, squinting against the sudden brightness. "Wake up." But it became clear he'd have to shake him.

Trying to ignore the tightness in his chest, Seto crossed over to the couch, his own heart bludgeoning his ribs. Upon closer inspection, he could see Alistair's back was coated in sweat. His jacket, which he'd presumably been using as a blanket, lay crumpled on the floor.

Seto uncertainly reached out and rested his fingertips on Alistair's shoulder. Before he could do more, Alistair's eyes snapped open and he'd aimed a punch in Seto's direction. Normally Seto had excellent reflexes, but the attack was so unexpected he didn't even flinch and the clumsy blow connected most forcibly with his nose which immediately started bleeding. As pain spread across his face, he staggered backwards, droplets of blood spattering onto the hardwood floor.

It took Alistair a moment to remember where he was and another to realize he'd punched Kaiba in the face. He stared at the wide-eyed CEO who had pressed his palm against his nose to stem the flow of blood.

"Sorry," he apologized automatically, still trying to drag himself out of his dream. 

"You were having a nightmare," Kaiba explained thickly. 

Alistair furrowed his eyebrows."If you'd experienced even a  _fraction_  of what I've been through, you'd have nightmares too," he said defensively, crossing his arms.

"You're not the only one who's ever had bad things happen to them, Alistair, or are you really self-centered enough to think that you are?" Kaiba snapped as he tilted his head backwards.

"What the hell's ever happened to you?" Alistair demanded. "Did daddy not get you the right colored pony?"

Nothing had ever gotten under his skin quite as much as that comment, and before he'd stopped to think about what he was doing, Seto'd grabbed Alistair by the front of his shirt and yanked him up so that they were standing practically nose to nose.

"I dare you to say that again," he growled as blood continued to trickle down his face.

"Get your hands off me!" Alistair snarled back, struggling to break out of Kaiba's grip.

A drop of blood rolled down Kaiba's top lip and he reflexively let go of Alistair with one hand to wipe it off. Alistair took the moment to yank himself out of Kaiba's grasp, but tripped over his own jacket and felt himself starting to fall. Instinctively, he grabbed a hold of the nearest thing that would help him catch his balance which was a fistful of Kaiba's turtleneck.

The unexpected and strong tug tightened the fabric around his neck and forced Seto to bend forwards to avoid choking. Alistair tried desperately to find his footing but felt the ground come completely out from under him after his foot landed strangely on the jacket's studded sleeve. His arm scraped painfully against the sharp corner of coffee table as he fell before his back hit the thin Persian rug covering the floor and knocked the wind out of him. Seto, dragged down by Alistair's momentum, landed hard on his knees, one hand breaking his fall by gripping onto the couch.

Dazed and gasping for breath, Alistair let go of Kaiba's shirt and attempted to prop himself up, gritting his teeth against the pain from the scrape on his arm. Kaiba quickly stood, glaring down at him with his hands balled into fists.

"Don't ever say something like that to me again. You claim that you know so much about my life, and maybe you do, but you know absolutely nothing about what I've had to endure to get where I am now! Maybe if you spent less time bitching about how horrible your life's been and started doing something about it I'd have more respect for you." Kaiba turned on his heel and stalked to the door before pausing. "Oh, and by the way: you're welcome," he said over his shoulder before slamming the door behind him.

Alistair stared after him as he nursed his injured arm. What the hell had that been about? Of the two of them, shouldn't he have been the most upset? Kaiba had walked in on him in a vulnerable moment, yet Kaiba had reacted as though it had been the other way around. 

* * *

A half an hour later, Seto lay in his bed, worn out, but reluctant to fall asleep. Who the hell was Alistair to put him under a microscope and decide what constituted as suffering? It was true that he still had his brother while Alistair's brother had been killed, and that was horrible, and Seto did feel sorry for him; he couldn't imagine life without Mokuba. But that didn't mean what Gozaburo had done to him didn't count. And what kind of person turned pain into a contest? Or used it as an excuse to judge other people? It was ludicrous!

In the silence of the night, he could hear the steady _tick tick tick_  of the clock on the far side of the wall. The sound reminded him of the clock inthe guest room, and he resolved to take it down the next day. In fact, why wait? He swung his legs off the side of the bed, padded across the plush carpet on the floor, and ripped the clock from the wall before quickly removing the batteries and tossing the lot onto the dresser.

There must have been a full moon that night, he realized, because the entire room was lit up by it so that the white hangings of his four poster bed glowed eerily while the posts threw dark, bar-like shadows across the floor. Seto ground his teeth. He was no prisoner anymore, and he was being ridiculous. Gozaburo was dead. He climbed back into bed and rolled onto his side so he faced the light from the window. He knew it was childish, but Seto had never been able to force himself to sleep in the dark.


	3. The Closest You Can Get to Flying

_"I took what I hated and made it a part of me."_

_~Figure .09, Linkin Park_

**The Closest You Can Get to Flying**

_The stench of cigar smoke was everywhere, thick and oppressive. Seto clambered backwards through the unseen forest of shirt sleeves and ties until he bumped into the back of the closet. His legs collapsed beneath him and he sank to the floor, his arms wrapping protectively around his knees._

_His step-father's distorted face loomed suddenly out of the darkness, his mustache curling downwards around a deep scowl. Seto hugged himself more tightly. It wasn't Gozaburo's anger that frightened him, though. Anger he could have endured. It was the expression in the businessman's eyes he was afraid of. There was no anger in those dark, deep-set eyes, but something else._

_Gozaburo brandished a leather riding crop at him and Seto flinched._

_"You know why you're here, don't you?"_

_"Because I didn't get a perfect score," Seto whispered, his eyes fixed on the instrument in his step-father's hand._

_"Ding, ding, ding," Gozaburo said sarcastically. "To most people, ninety-eight percent would be good enough, but you aren't 'most people,' are you?"_

_"No, sir."_

_"What are you?"_

_"A Kaiba."_

_"Right again. A Kaiba always goes above and beyond. You should have gotten a hundred and ten percent on that test which means you failed." He smacked the crop against his palm and Seto, ashamed even through his fear, felt tears well in his eyes before dribbling down his cheeks. He knew he had to say something to defend himself, something that would protect him. He prided himself on his maturity, and he yearned for Gozaburo see it too, because he surely wouldn't punish him if he considered him an equal rather than a child. But Seto was fully aware of how small he was. How helpless._

_"I'll do better next time, I promise! I'll study harder!" he cried, humiliated by how easily his step-father was able to remind him that despite his intelligence, he wasn't an equal. He was a child._

_Seto forced himself out of his protective ball and onto his knees."I'll do anything!" He reached out and gripped onto his stepfather's pant leg and looked imploringly up into his face. "Just please...please don't…"_

_"Stop crying!" Gozaburo's voice was full of scorn even as a smile twitched on his lips. He lifted his leg enough to kick Seto in the chest so he sprawled backwards and hit his head against the wall. "Crying is for girls and faggots. Is that what you are?"_

_"N-no, sir," Seto stammered as he tried to catch his breath._

" _Look at me when I'm talking to you." Gozaburo forced Seto's face up with the end of the riding crop. "Can't you even remember the most basic things you've been taught since you've been here? Words are nothing."_

" _Only actions speak the truth," Seto recited automatically, his eyes on the patch of light on the floor at his stepfather's feet. "Actions separate the weak from the powerful. A powerful person doesn't need the approval of others--he only counts on himself."_

" _Because?" Gozaburo prompted._

_Seto forced himself to swallow the lump in his throat and raise his gaze to meet his stepfather's."Because to be powerful is to make the world your enemy."_

" _Do you hate me, Seto?" Gozaburo asked conversationally, and Seto realized it was no longer the riding crop under his chin, but his stepfather's lightly calloused hand cupping his face._

" _Yes," Seto answered defiantly even as he felt himself shaking._

" _Hatred breeds motivation. Motivation breeds progress. Progress breeds success. Success breeds power. And power is everything." Gozaburo ran his thumb along Seto's cheekbone. "You don't hate me now, but I'm going to make you hate me, Seto."_

Seto's eyes snapped open and he jolted upright, his heart pounding and perspiration trickling down his brow. He hugged himself in the moment it took him to fully comprehend that he was in bed, not in his step-father's closet. Just another stupid nightmare. His shaking hands rested against the raised bumps on his arms and he realized without much surprise that he'd kicked all the blankets onto the floor. Glancing at the display on his cell phone he saw his alarm was only minutes from going off anyway. Shivering, he turned off the alarm and got out of bed.  _I'll have to talk to George about turning the heat up..._

He sighed in displeasure after flicking on the light and looking in the bathroom mirror. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but Alistair's haphazard punch had left him with a noticeable bruise. He cursed Alistair again before trying to figure out what to do. Finally, he walked back into the bedroom, scooped his cell phone off his bedside table, and called Roland.

"Yes, Mr. Kaiba?" Roland answered, his voice thick with sleep.

Unabashed that he'd likely woken him up, Seto explained that while beta-testing the VR pods, Mokuba had hit him in the face. Obviously, he couldn't go into headquarters with a bruise on his face, so he wanted Roland to buy make-up to cover it. 

If Roland found the task at all amusing, he was professional enough to hide it. "Is there a specific brand you wanted, or will something from the pharmacy be sufficient?" 

It was a fair question, but Seto felt his cheeks flush. "How should I know?" he snapped. "Just get something and meet me in the parking garage at 8:30." He hung up without waiting for a reply and tossed the phone onto the unmade bed. He hated Alistair for reducing him to such embarrassing measures. 

     When he arrived in the dining room at seven, Seto saw that Trudy had laid the newspaper and a cup of black coffee out for him. While he waited for her to come back with breakfast he opened the paper to the economics section, scowling when he saw an article titled:  _The End of an Era?_   _KC stock continues to plummet_. What did  _they_  know? Did anyone ever bother to look into  _why_  stock was so low? No, of course not. As usual, the entire state of affairs was blamed on  _him_. The author even had the audacity to suggest that 'leaving such a large company in the hands of a teenager' had 'finally proven to be too much pressure' and that the other executives might do better to seek a more 'seasoned' leader to 'steer Kaiba Corp back to glory.' Without reading further, Seto angrily scrunched the newspaper up and threw it across the room. It hit the wall next to the door and slid to the ground in a pathetic heap.

He reached for the coffee and burned the roof of his mouth after carelessly taking a large gulp. He choked but managed to avoid spraying coffee everywhere by spitting it back into the cup. As he was wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand he heard someone enter the room. "This is boiling hot! I could have scalded myself on this!"

Seto had expected to see Trudy cowering by the door holding a tray of food when he looked up, but was taken aback to discover it was Alistair, dressed in the same stupid faded tank-top he'd worn the day before."What are  _you_  doing here?" Seto asked, not bothering to soften the irritation in his voice. "I told you breakfast was at nine. Can't you read a clock?"

"The clock in my room doesn't work," Alistair explained. "Besides, I was hungry and Mokuba told me you have breakfast at seven."

"That doesn't mean you can just invite yourself to eat with me." Seto took some satisfaction at seeing how Alistair was favoring the arm he'd scraped against the coffee table.

"I'll keep that in mind next time," Alistair  cordially as he pulled out a chair on the far end of the oval table. "Your nose looks great by the way."

Seto self-consciously put his hand over his nose just as Trudy came bustling in carrying a tray laden with toast, scrambled eggs, and sausage.

"Good morning" she said cheerfully, a strong Welsh accent dragging her words up melodically. "Oh, there's two of you!" she exclaimed when she saw Alistair. "Seto, you didn't tell me Mr. Alistair would be joining you for breakfast!" Her scolding tone took Alistair rather aback. He knew from his research into the Kaiba household that Trudy Ravensdale had worked for the Kaibas for over twenty years, but even so, her familiarity with her young boss was far more maternal than he would have thought Kaiba would let anyone get away with. 

"'Mr. Alistair' didn't make that very clear to me either." 

Trudy waved the tray at him exasperatedly before turning to their guest. "What would you like for breakfast?" she asked Alistair politely." And go ahead and sit down; no need to stand on my account."

"Oh." Alistair went back to his seat. "I uh…I guess I'll have the same as Kaiba. Do you want some help?" he asked, as she turned to leave, uncomfortable with the prospect of making her go to the trouble of cooking for him.

Trudy smiled and tucked a flyaway strand of grey hair behind her ear. "That's very kind, but you're our guest. Your only job is to enjoy yourself. I've been doing this for longer than you've been alive; I can handle it, don't you worry." 

"You realize that's her job, right?" Seto reminded him after she'd gone, cutting into his eggs with a trained haughtiness. "She's not doing me a favor by cooking my food; it's what I pay her for."

"Oh right, I forgot," Alistair retorted, crossing his arms. "You don't have to be nice to people as long as you pay them."

Seto appraised Alistair's sanctimonious expression across the table. He might have been impressed by Alistair's display of moral superiority if he hadn't just spent the night luxuriating in the master bedroom. As such, he wasn't in the mood for a lecture from a false prophet, and wished Alistair would go away and let him enjoy his breakfast in peace.

"Are you just here to annoy me, or do you have something to say?"

"I was going to apologize for what I said last night, but now I don't think I will."

"I'm heartbroken. Was that all?"

Alistair found himself flustered by Kaiba's blasé tone."You're a real piece of work, you know that?" he snapped.

"I'm so glad you noticed," Seto replied, running a hand through his hair and smirking.

Alistair flared his nostrils as heat crept up his face."You've got some nerve acting all cavalier after totally losing it last night."

"Ooh, big word. Did you look that up just to use on me?" 

"Why do you have to be such a dick, Kaiba?" Alistair snarled.

"That sounds more like something that would come out of your mouth." Alistair was beginning to act like Wheeler which was just boring. Seto wished he hadn't thrown the newspaper so he could use it as an additional physical barrier between them; the table clearly wasn't enough. Instead, he lowered his gaze to his phone screen.

"Why are you letting me stay here if I'm so stupid?"

"Believe me, if I thought you were stupid you wouldn't be here," Seto corrected him. He set his phone aside. Apparently, this was a necessary conversation after all. "Actually, let me rephrase that just so we're clear: you  _are_  stupid, but you're the kind of stupid that comes with a set of skills that could cause trouble for me. So in a cruel twist of irony, the only way I can eliminate you as a problem is by keeping you here."

Alistair studied Kaiba's expression. His tone had been matter-of-fact--almost bored, but Alistair didn't buy it. Notoriously mistrusting Kaiba would have killed him before he'd let Alistair live in his house which meant he had to have an agenda. 

Seto became uncomfortably aware he was being dissected, and stood abruptly, his plate bumping against his coffee mug with a delicate _clink_ , and silently strode from the room.

Alistair knew better than to follow him and instead sat back in his chair.

He was still working to figure out Kaiba's angle when Trudy returned with a second tray of food and an apple. She  _tsked_ when she saw that Seto had not only left his guest alone, he'd only eaten half his food.

She'd managed to squeeze a plate of scrambled eggs, a generous helping of hash browns, bacon, sausage, and several thick slices of toast as well as a tall glass of orange juice onto the tray. "Excuse me for saying so," she said when she saw him staring at it with apprehension. "But I thought you looked like you could use a square meal or two."

"I can't eat all of this." Even the thought of so much food, however tasty, made his stomach hurt. "Could we maybe share? I don't want to waste it..."

 

Despite decorum dictating that to agree would be most improper, the kindness in his smile won her over and Trudy found herself pulling up a chair next to him.

She was appalled by his table manners, but nonetheless found Alistair to be very personable, causing her to silently chastise herself for her initial qualms when Seto had told her where he was from. He spoke very little about his own background for which she could hardly blame him, mentioning only that he'd lost his family in the war. By the time the food and orange juice were gone, she'd decided to take the poor boy under her wing and turn him into a proper gentleman.

"I'm very glad Seto brought you here, Mr. Alistair, and I'm so sorry that you've had it so rough, truly, but it's all behind you now."

"Not if Kaiba can help it," Alistair said sullenly.

She waved the sentence away. "Seto is touchy, certainly, and a bit rough around the edges, but his heart's in the right place. Always has been. I've told him a million times to crack a smile every now and again, but he never listens."

"I'd say he smiles plenty--it's just not particularly pleasant," Alistair couldn't help but respond, recalling Kaiba's annoying smirk.

Trudy regarded Alistair with interest. She was desperately curious to know how Alistair and Seto, whose lives were worlds apart, had come to cross paths. The animosity that existed between the two had been practically palpable, but where it came from she had no idea. Seto's impartial explanation had been that Alistair was a refugee who would be a temporary live-in guest at the estate.

"How is it you and Seto know each other?" she asked finally, trying to sound conversational.

The question took Alistair completely off-guard. It hadn't crossed his mind that the long-time housekeeper would know nothing of DOMA and his hatred of the Kaiba family. But then, why would she? It wasn't something he imagined she and Kaiba chatted about over tea.

"We...I...Well." He struggled to quickly devise a plausible and less dramatic explanation than 'I was in a cult for seven years and it was my job to steal his soul in order to help resurrect the Great Leviathan of Atlantis.' "We met in California," he answered honestly. "We argued a bit about politics, which apparently was memorable enough for him to offer me a place to stay now that I'm in-between jobs. I was studying to be a pilot before," he added, gesturing vaguely and hoping she'd fill in the gaps for herself.

Trudy's brow creased in sympathy as she put the pieces together, After the massacre of his family, he must have managed to escape across the border and flee to the United States. There he'd probably found some menial job that had somehow brought him into contact with Seto who she could imagine only too well getting in a tangle with just about anybody. What she still didn't understand was how that translated into free room and board.

"This was Mokuba's idea," Alistair clarified, answering her unasked question.

"Ah." Now the whole thing made perfect sense. Like opposite ends of a magnet, whatever Seto repelled, Mokuba seemed to attract, so it followed that anyone Seto didn't get along with, Mokuba would like immensely. And like the angel on Seto's shoulder, he must have convinced his brother to be altruistic. Extraordinarily altruistic. It bolstered her fragile optimism that Seto would be alright.

 

* * *

Seto's mood had reached an all-time low by the time he met up with Roland at KC headquarters. He'd spent the entire drive trying to cool off without much success. Thinking back on what Alistair had said kept making him angry all over again.  Who the hell did he think he was psychoanalyzing anyone when he couldn't even get through the night without crying out in his sleep?

To cap it all off, his driver got caught in traffic because some idiots had gotten into an accident. 

When he finally arrived, he stormed out of the car and up to Roland, who was waiting for him, holding a paper drugstore bag.

"Good morn-" Roland started, but Seto cut him off.

"What do you have for me?"

"Well," Roland said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a glass bottle of some sort of flesh colored liquid. "The woman at the drugstore recommended it. I wasn't sure what would match your skin the best so I just got the lightest color."

 

Seto yanked the plastic covering off and pressed down on the pump causing a meager spritz of the 'foundation' to squirt into his hand.  _Whoever designed this should be shot_ , he thought, having to pump the stupid thing five more times before he had a more reasonable amount. He handed the bottle back to Roland and proceeded to smear the creamy mixture on his nose and rub it in.

"How does it look?"

Roland shuffled nervously on the spot.

"Maybe I should have gotten it a shade darker…And maybe you weren't supposed to rub it in like that..."

With slight trepidation, Seto returned to the car, which Jones had left idling, and peered into the rear-view mirror. The foundation was at least two shades lighter than his skin leaving him looking like he had a tan everywhere but on his nose.

"What the hell, Roland?"

"I had no idea it would do that!"

"You should have asked," Seto snapped, fervently trying to remove some of the color. "Ugh, I guess that's the best I can expect." He waved Jones away. "Come on, let's go. I trust you brought your report with you?" Roland nodded. "Good." With his manservant in tow, he swept towards the back entry to Kaiba Corp.

* * *

 In the time between eating his breakfast and Mokuba waking up, Alistair had gone back to his room to work out, convinced that if he was in better shape, Kaiba would think twice before antagonizing him again.

He made it back to the dining room in time to find Mokuba working on a large plate of pancakes that had been smothered in syrup.

"Morning Ali—woah; what happened to you?" Mokuba openly stared at the large scrape on his arm.

"Your brother and I got into a fight last night," he answered nonchalantly. "We had an argument and he ran out of things to say. Anyway, It looks a lot worse than it actually is." Mostly true. His arm hurt terribly along the bruise when he moved it, and his back twinged every time he sat down or shifted position, but he'd suffered worse injuries before. "Look, don't worry about it. What I wanted to ask you was: do you want to go riding with me today?" He was sick of being cooped up in the house and longed for the freedom of the open road.

"On your motorcycle?" Mokuba clarified in surprise.

"Yeah. I thought we could drive up to the mountains. Oh, but you have to study, don't you?" He'd forgotten.

Mokuba shook his head. "No, I get weekends off. But I'm not sure Seto would like that. Besides, we're supposed to go to the mall to get some more clothes for you today. That's the plan anyway. Jones was going to pick us up at twelve."

"I don't need any more clothes," Alistair insisted. "I can just wash these in the sink when they get dirty." He indicated his tank-top and faded blue jeans.

"You don't  _have_  to, you know; Trudy does the laundry. But you can't just walk around naked while they're being washed so you need some more clothes. Besides," Mokuba gave him a sympathetic smile, "don't you want a shirt that actually fits?"

Alistair self-consciously crossed his arms in an unsuccessful attempt to hide his stomach. "I guess. But I don't have much money left…"

"Don't worry about it." Mokuba replied unconcernedly, going back to eating his breakfast at an alarming rate. "We're covering your expenses while you're here."

* * *

As Mokuba had said, at exactly twelve O'clock, Alistair heard the sound of tires on the driveway and he and Mokuba left the house.

They both greeted Jones and one of Seto's two bodyguards, Saito, who explained that he would be accompanying them.

Saito had worked for the Kaibas ever since Seto's takeover of the company seven years before, and while he harbored no strong feelings of affection for either of the brothers, he couldn't help but wonder what had possessed Seto, whom he respected, to do something as reckless as take in a stranger. But it wasn't his place to question his boss, only to follow orders, so despite his personal misgivings, he kept silent as Alistair climbed into the car beside his charge.

Sitting in the car facing Saito, whose stony countenance alone was enough to cow him, Alistair did his best not to look into the bodyguard's face. The absolute intimidation radiating from snakeline brown eyes was what Alistair assumed Kaiba was aiming for with his own icy glare, but he still had a long way to go. Next to Saito, Kaiba would surely look like a sulky child.

He was extremely grateful when Mokuba, who seemed inexplicably unaffected by Saito's presence in the limo, requested that Jones turn the radio on.

"Seto hates having music on in the car, but I think it's way more fun," Mokuba yelled over the pounding beat of a clubby pop song in which the singer was describing how life was too short not to 'feel it all.' "Whenever I go somewhere without him I have Jones turn it up really loud."

Three songs later, Alistair found himself agreeing with Kaiba's desire not to have music on in the car, but Mokuba seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He sang along practically line for line with every song and stomped in time with the beat, occasionally looking in Alistair's direction as though to invite him to join in the fun.

Even after obsessing over the family for years, the answer to the riddle of how two brothers could have grown up to be so different eluded Alistair completely. Shouldn't Mokuba have become as embittered and temperamental as Kaiba?

* * *

Four floors of plexiglass and steel shimmering in the afternoon sunlight made up the Domino City Megamall whose sign boasted over five hundred stores, a movie theater, aquarium, and dueling arena. The sheer scale of the establishment was enough to make Alistair uneasy, but it was the volume of people that put him truly on-edge. From the moment Jones dropped them off at the mall's main entrance, they were surrounded by people. Saito's presence at their back did nothing to alleviate his growing sense of claustrophobia. 

"There are a few stores we can start with," Mokuba explained, casually tying his long black hair back into a ponytail when he noticed two teenage girls surreptitiously taking pictures from behind a marble column.

"Sure," Alistair agreed quickly, hoping a shop would offer some respite from the hordes of people streaming past them.

Alistair knew Saito was there as a safeguard for Mokuba, but he couldn't help but wonder if he didn't draw more attention to them than was necessary. His crisp black suit, slicked back hair, and mistrustful expression stood in stark contrast to the bright, happy shoppers around them, many of whom looked back at them as they passed.

"This is where Seto gets most of his casual clothes from," Mokuba explained, stopping suddenly in front of a clothing store called 'DARE.'  Edgy t-shirts, pants, and boots seemed to be the shop's specialty.

Out of the corner of his eye, Alistair noticed Saito move to stand next to the entrance .

"Good afternoon," a stylish employee with spiky silver-blonde hair greeted them at the door, smiling broadly and flashing overly-bleached teeth. "My name's Klai. Are you looking for anything in particular?" He eyed Alistair with snobby derision, clearly certain he couldn't even afford to be in the store.

"Do you have anything new in?" Mokuba asked. Klai's gaze shifted downwards and he seemed to recognize the younger Kaiba brother.

"We just got our fall collection in," Klai explained, the disdain gone from his face. "Lots of bold colors, a little bit of leather. Spikes are very in this season as well."

Mokuba stuck his lip out thoughtfully and looked over at Alistair. "Sound good to you?"

"Maybe, but I'm just going to look first," he said, imitating Kaiba's usual dismissive tone. "If I require your services I'll come get you," he added to the sales associate.

Klai's nostrils flared indignantly before he turned on his heel and slunk off to assist one of the other customers.

 

After walking around the store twice, Alistair found several items he liked so that when they arrived at the check-out counter, his arms were laden with several new shirts and pairs of jeans, a pair of black leather boots.

As the cashier rang the clothes up, Alistair stared in shock at the amount of money each item cost. He looked over at Mokuba to see if he was seeing the same numbers, but the boy wasn't paying attention.

Mokuba, unlike his brother, had very few memories of life before they'd been adopted and knew nothing of not living in luxury. As a result, money meant very little to him; he simply went shopping, handed the cashier a card, signed a receipt, and went on his way. To him, the amount of money he'd spent on clothes for Alistair was hardly a big deal.

* * *

 

"That was fun," Mokuba declared once they'd left the store. "Now let's get lunch. What do you want? I think I'll get a hamburger and fries." Secretly he was hoping Hillary would be there.

Alistair shrugged."That sounds fine." He was actually sick of hamburgers and french fries since that was what he, Valon, and Raphael had always defaulted to while on the road, but Mokuba seemed gung-ho enough about it that he didn't feel like disagreeing. And anyway, Mokuba was paying.

They could hear the food court before they could actually see it. That slightly echoey din of hundreds of conversations, amplified by the high domed ceiling every shopping center seemed to have at its heart. Just as ubiquitous were the choices on offer. No matter that the Domino Megamall billed itself as high class, evidenced by its sweeping staircases and soaring fountains, mall food would always be hamburgers, pizza, and Asian-fusion with an overpriced dessert and coffee kiosk squashed somewhere in between. Even if he wasn't particularly in the mood for any of those things, Alistair found the familiarity somehow soothing, and made no protest when Mokuba directed him towards an empty table between a large family and a concrete pillar. 

Instead of asking Alistair what he wanted to eat, Mokuba distractedly ran a hand through his bangs and straightened his shirt before getting in line, his gaze fixed on the pretty girl working the burger stand cash register. Saito followed several paces behind his young master, leaving Alistair alone at the table, grateful that he could breathe again even if the relief was temporary.

It was inconceivably bizarre to be at the Domino City Mall with Seto Kaiba's brother who was casually buying him expensive clothes to go with the domestic life he'd suddenly been dropped into. He knew it was absurd to find his current situation more incomprehensible than working for an Atlantean ghost, and that it spoke to how upside down his life had always been, but nonetheless he found himself missing his small room in Dartz's castle and even Rafael and Valon. He'd largely disliked Rafael's condescension and Valon's cockiness, and Dartz had always been distant, but they were at least familiar. He wondered again what had happened to them and pondered for a moment if he ought to look for them, but quickly discarded the notion. Why bother? The only thing that had tied them together had been their mission.

In retrospect, Alistair supposed it should have been obvious Dartz had been playing them, but he'd wanted so desperately to have someone to guide him, someone to protect him, someone to believe in. Someone who would make the loss of his family hurt just a little bit less. Dartz may have been a liar, but at least he'd given him that. Without him, Alistair felt like he was drowning in a vast ocean of limitless possibilities with no ship in sight. For the time being, his only lifeline seemed to be Kaiba. The thought was hysterically depressing and he quickly cast around for some kind of distraction.

Mokuba had made it to the front of the line and appeared to be flirting with the girl at the cash register, one arm propped casually on the counter. She was clearly a few years too old for him, which Alistair would have assumed would have made his advances more pathetic than charming, but then the girl tilted her head forward and laughed in the same artificial way girls had always laughed at Valon's far from clever punchlines. It was a dance he'd seen play out more times than he would have preferred to bear witness to, but despite his familiarity, Alistair still found such rituals of flirtation and eventual conquest perplexing. Hooking up and dating had always been out of the question, though somehow Valon had managed to fit in a little of both. Not to say Alistair had spent seven years with no desire for companionship. There had been many times he'd longed for someone to hold him, but between their training and their missions, it was something he'd only ever seriously pined for late at night when he could hear Valon and whatever date he'd brought back with him moaning through their apartment's thin walls. 

To keep such inconvenient feelings of loneliness at bay, he'd thrown himself into his own personal mission which had resulted in what his colleagues had considered an increasingly unsettling obsession with Kaiba. Every scrap of free time he'd had, had been spent spying on Kaiba. Watching Kaiba in his office, listening in on his phone calls, studying his duels all but frame by frame.

He'd bored his two companions practically to tears on more than one occasion with his rants about how much he hated Seto Kaiba and had only backed off of the subject after Valon took to calling him 'Kaibasexual.'

Mokuba returned with a tray of hamburgers, several containers of fries, and two large sodas. Saito trailed behind him, his expression as blank as ever.

"Dig in!" Mokuba announced, already unwrapping a burger.

"What did you say to that girl?" Alistair asked with mild curiosity.

"Who, Hillary?" Mokuba asked innocently. "Nothing." A flush had crept up his face and Alistair couldn't help but wonder if, were he still alive, Mikey would be interested in girls too. "She's cute, isn't she?"

"I guess. But don't you think she's kind of old for you?" 

Mokuba looked injured. "She's not _that_ much older than me. Besides, I hang out with adults all the time; she can't even tell."

Alistair threw his hands up in surrender. "Hey, it's your thing, you're probably right. I'm certainly no expert."

"But you've had a girlfriend before, right?" Mokuba knew his brother had never been involved with anyone, and was therefore quite keen to take advantage of any advice Alistair had to offer.  

"No," Alistair admitted easily, unwrapping a hamburger and taking a bite. "I was…focusing on other things."

"Oh…right. Sorry," Mokuba apologized, much chagrined. How could he have forgotten Alistair's past so easily? "But hey, now you have time," he added more brightly before shoving a handful of fries into his mouth. "And you never know, maybe there will be a cute girl at the aviation academy!"

Over Mokuba's shoulder, Alistair thought he caught Saito roll his eyes.

"Yeah, maybe...And hey, it's still pretty early, are you sure you don't want to go riding?" Alistair pressed Mokuba while he finished off the rest of his lunch.

"I would," Mokuba replied. "But like I said: I don't think Seto would like that. You can go though; I'll have George, our groundskeeper, pull it out for you and make sure it's got a full tank of gas and all that."

"Come on, what Kaiba doesn't know won't hurt him. It'll be really fun."

Mokuba hesitated before answering, glancing in Saito's direction to see if he was listening, but the bodyguard appeared to be absorbed in answering a text. It was true that the odds of Seto finding out were slim to none since he was bound to be at work until stupid O'clock at night, and even if he did find out, what could he do? Yell maybe.

"Ok, let's do it!"

* * *

Seto sank into his desk chair and allowed himself a moment of rest. He'd spent the entire day so far in meetings. First with Tanaka, his PR manager, to figure out the best way to let the public know Kaiba Corporation was hardly on the brink of bankruptcy, then with the head of sales and his team who were going through some sort of existential crisis over the number of people wanting to return their Duel Disks. After that he'd had to sit through a video conference with some of the major shareholders and listen to them bitch about their concerns for the future of their investment. Finally, he had some well-earned time to himself. He was enjoying the silence of his office when his phone rang. Wondering what on earth he was needed for now, he answered.

"What do you want, Roland? I told you I'm not meeting with anyone else unless they can offer solutions and not just complain about all the problems I already know about!"

"No, it's nothing like that, sir. I just got a call from Saito. He thought you'd want to know that Alistair just took off towards the mountains on his motorcycle. Mokuba's with him."

It took all of Seto's willpower not to smash the phone against the table out of pure frustration."And  _why_ ," he said through gritted teeth, "did Saito think it was appropriate to let Mokuba go with him?"

"Apparently they snuck past him. Saito tried to chase after them, but the car didn't fit on the mountain road, so he tried to call you, but none of his calls got through so he called me, and-."

"What exactly," Seto interrupted him, "is the point of hiring bodyguards if they're incapable of keeping track of  _one_ fourteen year-old?"

"Sir, I…"

"Find a smaller car and go after them. If anything happens to Mokuba, I'm holding  _you_ responsible." 

He absently cracked all the knuckles on his right hand as he thought about it, but eventually Seto decided to stay where he was because he suspected that Mokuba had gone willingly. And as little as he trusted Alistair, he was fairly certain he wouldn't hurt Mokuba. 

* * *

The further they got from the mansion, the more relaxed Alistair began to feel. He loved riding almost as much as flying, especially out in the country like this where he could go as fast as he wanted. He sped up slightly, aware that Mokuba had never ridden on a motorcycle before, but wanting him to get to experience the thrill of going fast. Mokuba gripped Alistair more tightly, but didn't seem to mind the acceleration.

As they roared up the mountain path, dirt spraying out behind them, Mokuba reflected on what Alistair had said about Seto being too controlling of him. Maybe he had a point. Surely he had to realize that Mokuba was old enough to go on a motorcycle ride.

When they finally reached the top of the mountain, Alistair bringing the bike to a dramatic sliding halt, and had a chance to admire the view, Mokuba had made up his mind to have a talk with his brother about giving him a little more freedom.

"Did you like it?" Alistair asked, pulling his helmet off, setting it on the ground next to the motorcycle, and shaking his hair out.

"It was really fun!" Mokuba exclaimed, yanking the helmet off his head, his messy black hair frizzing around his shoulders. "But it must be even better to be the one driving, huh?"

Alistair nodded. "It's the closest you can get to flying when you're still be on the ground. And it's not hard to drive, not compared to a plane."

"I bet. Maybe I'll learn how to drive one someday."

"Sure. I could teach you."

"Why are you so nice to me?" Mokuba asked curiously, setting the helmet that was actually his brother's on the ground next to Alistair's. "I mean, I know you don't like my brother, so why are you nice to me? Is it to bother Seto?" The thought had just occurred to him.

Alistair saw the look of dismay on Mokuba's face. "It's nothing like that," he answered. "Sure I don't like Kaiba, but that has nothing to do with how I feel about you. You were kind to me, so I like you. And you remind me of my brother."

Mokuba looked first relieved, then sympathetic. "You must really miss him."

Alistair nodded, not trusting himself to speak. It was moments like this when he missed Mikey the most. He really did like Mokuba, but he wished it was his own brother he was taking for a ride in the mountains.

Mokuba's eyebrows knit in sympathy. He knew about the revolution that had been taking place across the border, of course. Knew how they'd gone through two shaky regimes in fifteen years, and about the thousands of civilians who had died in the crossfire as the rebel army and military continued to fight for power. Knew too, about the controversy as the Domino government wavered back and forth on relaxing the border to take in refugees, uncertain whether to bend to the pressure from its' people, who balked at the notion of clogging the system with their poor and undereducated neighbors, or the United Nations, who decried Domino for standing by while innocent people continued to be slaughtered. But none of the political discourse or even the shocking images on the news of crying children and hollow-eyed women had made it real for him. Until Alistair had come along, the conflict across the border had simply been a touchy subject he'd been instructed not to discuss in public.

After Alistair had pulled himself together, he and Mokuba went on as though the moment had never happened and explored the patch of woodland on top of the mountain, finally sprawling out in the grass.

Alistair would have liked to have spent all afternoon looking up at the sky, but after the first fifteen minutes, Mokuba started to fidget.

The view was beautiful, but the grass was pricklier than it looked, and he was convinced he'd already been bitten at least twice. A city boy through and through.

Sensing Mokuba's discomfort, and correctly guessing its source, Alistair suggested they head back. 

They were only a third of the way back down when they all but ran headlong into Roland on the narrow road. To avoid a collision, Alistair was forced to skid to a stop, but because the road was made of dirt and pebbles the tires couldn't grip, and the bike tipped over and landed heavily on Mokuba's left leg.

Alistair yanked his helmet off as Roland jumped out of his pickup truck to rush to their aid.

"Are you ok?" Alistair asked Mokuba in concern.

Mokuba groaned, also taking his helmet off and rubbing his head. "I'm not sure. I hit my head, and I can't move my leg."

"Are you alright?" Roland asked, horrified that he'd been the cause of the accident, bending to try and help heft the machine off the two. Alistair immediately got to his feet to assess the damage to himself and to Mokuba. He was more or less alright himself; his helmet, jacket, and riding gloves had absorbed much of the impact, although his wrist felt sprained. Mokuba tried to stand, but immediately fell over, the blood draining from his face. His hands clutched onto his leg, which had twisted on an unnatural angle.

"We have to get you to a hospital," Roland said unnecessarily. "I'll take you right now." He and Alistair helped Mokuba hobble to the passenger seat and get him in the car.

Mokuba taken care of, Roland turned to Alistair.

"Can you follow behind?"

"Why? I'm fine."

Taking in the way Alistair was favoring his left wrist, Roland shook his head."You should have your wrist looked at. Can you drive?"

"Sure." 

* * *

 After a doctor had dressed Mokuba's broken leg and told Alistair what he'd already known about his wrist being sprained, Roland knew he had to call his boss.

 "Sir," he started once Seto had picked up. "I have some bad news."

Seto felt his stomach constrict. Had he been wrong? Had Alistair done something to Mokuba? "What happened?" he demanded, already halfway out of his seat. "Where are you?"

"I'm at the hospital. Everyone's fine, but Mokuba broke his leg."

"He what? How?" There was a long pause. "Spit it out, Roland!"

"I was driving up to check on them at the same time that they were coming back down and we almost ran into each other. The bike tipped over and landed on Mokuba's leg. The doctor said that it's not a bad break, though."

"Well that's  _great_  news," Seto spat sarcastically. "Jesus Christ, Roland, don't you know how to drive?"

Roland wasn't usually one to try to worm his way out of taking responsibility, but in this case he decided to make an exception. "All due respect, but Alistair was driving way too fast for a mountain road."

"I couldn't care less whose fault it was, what is this, kindergarten? The point is that Mokuba's got a broken leg and now I have to interrupt my day to go deal with it."

"There's no need for you to come here," Roland insisted. 

"Excuse me for being skeptical, but since between you, neither you nor Saito were able to keep Mokuba safe in the first place, I'd rather deal with this myself." Seto hung up the phone and prepared to head over to the hospital. As he was leaving his office, Valerie looked up from her computer and eyed him questioningly.

"Push my meeting to tomorrow," he said.

"Of course."

Seto arrived at the hospital twenty minutes later to find Roland, Alistair, and Mokuba, now on crutches and with a cast on his leg, waiting for him. He glared at all three of them. Roland and Mokuba looked properly chastised, but Alistair stared back at him defiantly, and Seto scowled at him.

He was sick of having to clean up other people's messes, he really didn't like hospitals, and the only emotion that should have been emanating from him was shame at having caused the accident that had dragged Seto there.

On the ride back to the estate, Mokuba apologized profusely for having gone off when he knew he shouldn't have, and promised it would never happen again. He seemed to think Seto's silence was an indication that he was gearing up to really let him have it when they got home. Alistair knew better. Gearing up though he probably was, Alistair was fairly certain it wouldn't be Mokuba bearing the brunt of Kaiba's wrath.

Upon entering the grounds, Roland, with Saito's help, unloaded Alistair's motorcycle (now sporting a long scratch down one side), and wheeled it off to the garage, but not before Seto shot Saito a look that said quite plainly how he felt about the man letting Mokuba drive off with Alistair.

It wasn't until the three of them were in the house that Seto finally spoke. "Mokuba-."

"I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry!"

"Go to your room." Mokuba let his head hang and proceeded to limp off, still not used to having to use crutches to walk. Once he was gone, Seto turned to look at Alistair. He narrowed his eyes and in one swift motion, pinned Alistair to the wall by his neck. "Don't you  _ever_  endanger Mokuba's life again," Seto breathed, his eyes boring into Alistair's. "You're here because I let you stay--a courtesy you hardly deserve. And mark my words: keeping you around doesn't have to be enjoyable for you, and the  _only_ thing stopping me from locking you in the basement is Mokuba's insistence that I treat you humanely. But if you so much as suggestthat he do something dangerous I will ensure that you rot in the dark, do I make myself clear?"

Alistair knew that it was protective older brother Kaiba he was talking to, and protective older brother Kaiba deserved his respect."I understand."

Seto had expected a snarky comment, not compliance, and faltered while searching for a response. In that moment, he became uncomfortably aware that he was standing close enough to Alistair to see that he had three light freckles lining his cheekbone. Somehow even angrier than before, he flung Alistair away from him before silently stalking back outside to the waiting limo that would return him to headquarters.


	4. Seeing Things as They Are

_"Beautiful face. Beautiful body. Horrible attitude."_

~Jennifer L. Armentrout,  _Obsidian_

**Seeing Things as They Are**

When Dartz had first introduced Valon as the third Orichalcos warrior, Alistair had been convinced he'd never be able to work alongside him. That the brash Australian would irrevocably interrupt the rhythm of his life and that every interaction between them would leave him wanting to suffocate Valon in his sleep. For a while, that had been true, and he'd made sure that his colleague knew it. 'If I have to put up with him, he has to put up with me' had been his motto. But Valon hadn't cared. Certainly he'd been aware that Alistair didn't like him, but he'd rarely taken the bait. And gradually, it became harder to find Valon annoying than to just accept him. 

Similarly, even though he'd been certain he'd never adjust to living in the dream world of the Kaiba estate, by the end of the first week, he surprised himself with how comfortable he'd already become.

Over the next few days, Alistair barely saw either of the Kaiba brothers. He caught glimpses of Kaiba when he came home from work, often well past eleven at night, and chatted with Mokuba at meals, but other than that he was on his own.

The weather remained a perfect blend of sultry and breezy, so he spent much of his time in the garden. The artificial, manicured lawns and bushes shaped to perfection made his skin crawl, and he found the stone fountains with water elegantly springing forth from the palms of Greek gods distastefully posh, but the garden also included, among the meticulously placed trees and flowers, one untamed willow partially shielding a white marble bench.

It was the perfect escape from the oppressiveness of the mansion without having to leave the grounds, and quickly became Alistair's favorite place to spend long afternoons thinking or reading books from the Kaiba's private library as the wind through the branches tousled his hair and the smell of the tree and earth filled his nostrils. Alistair hadn't read much in the way of novels growing up, and had never given reading as a pastime much thought, but he found himself devouring one book after another. 

As the week came to a close, Alistair couldn't help but wonder if Kaiba had forgotten to call about the aviation exam. He was eager to take the test because the sooner he took it, the sooner he could log enough hours to become an officially licensed pilot, and the sooner he could turn his back on Kaiba forever and be the better for it. By Thursday morning, he had decided he had little choice but to confront Kaiba about setting a date for the test.

He waited in the dining room for Kaiba to show up for breakfast, but after fifteen minutes, Trudy said he wasn't coming.

"If he's not down by seven-fifteen, he's opted to get something on the way to work, or more likely, to skip breakfast altogether." She looked deeply disapproving. "What would you like, the usual?" 

When she returned twenty minutes later, he set his book aside and pulled up a chair for her. 

"What are you reading?" She asked as she set the tray down and began unloading it onto the table. 

" _Beowulf_ "," he answered, though his eyes had strayed from his book to the steaming plate of eggs and bacon that was already making his mouth water. In her subtle way, she had picked up on the way he liked his breakfast, and was pleased to see that the young man who had sworn up and down on the first morning that he couldn't clear his plate now actually seemed to be hungry. 

" _Beowulf_? That's such a violent book."

"I don't mind that," he said around a mouthful of bacon. "I felt sorry for Grendel, though." 

"Wasn't Grendel the monster?" she clarified in slight surprise.

"Technically, but I don't think he's a monster. Hrothgar's hall was built in Grendel's territory and he defended it." Alistair set his fork aside, his face darkening."They could have moved the hall, but they decided they had more of a right to that land than he did just because they wanted it."

As he spoke, Trudy realized how strongly he felt about something she'd only thought of as breakfast conversation and decided to change the subject."You enjoy reading, then?"

The momentary darkness in Alistair's eyes lifted. "Yeah. But before this week I didn't read that much." 

"If I may, I have a suggestion for what you might read next. It's not fantasy, and it's not as action-packed as _Beowulf_ , but one of my favorite books growing up was  _Black Beauty._ Do you know it?" When he shook his head, she elaborated. "It's about a horse named Black Beauty, and documents his life from his perspective. If I recall, it was written as an attempt to garner sympathy for cab horses. It's quite sad, but given how you felt about Grendel, you might like it. There's probably a copy in the library, but if not I'm pretty sure I still have it if you'd like."

* * *

 Within the next hour he'd finished  _Beowulf_  while sitting out in the garden in his usual haunt under the willow tree. He knew he wasn't supposed to be happy Beowulf got killed at the end, but he couldn't help but appreciate the poetic justice of Beowulf's death at the hands of a 'monster.' 

A breeze had picked up while he'd been reading, causing the branches of the willow to rustle serenely. On the trunk, a line of ants marched along deep grooves in the trunk and disappeared under a jagged tear in the bark. Somewhere just out of sight, a bird chirped an answer to its mate, and Alistair could hear the rustle of their wings as they took flight. He leaned back on his palms, closing his eyes against a beam of sunlight permeating the dense foliage of the tree. It was the kind of day that even smelled warm.  

With a sluggish feeling of shock, he realized he was content. The garden lent itself to feelings of tranquility, of course, but it was more than that. For the first time in years, he felt no sense of urgency. There were no soldiers to flee from, no mission to prepare for, and no longer even an enemy to expend energy hating. It would be short-lived, he knew. If Kaiba kept his word, he'd soon have his piloting credentials and could start working. But although that would result in the pressures of working life, he couldn't imagine that would ever weigh as much. 

And then what? 

A cloud passed in front of the sun and he opened his eyes to stare absently at the nearest clump of leaves. 

Having a steady source of income was a good start, but was that it? He'd never thought about what he wanted out of life before, and he found it both exciting and terrifying that it was something he could now contemplate. Did he want to go home? The thought gave him a thrill even as logic told him that the home he remembered didn't exist anymore. The beautiful stone buildings with their blankets of moss were gone. The village nestled in the arms of the mountains with the natural craggy playground of his childhood was now a shattered heap of brick and soot. 

If he couldn't go home, should he stay in Domino? Return to America? Did he dare consider the possibility of a family? Someone to keep him from being blown from place to place and instead anchor him in just one? It all seemed to come back to companionship.

Even if he wished it was coming from another source, he was grateful he'd be walking away from his entanglement with the Kaibas with a pilot's licence. Being a pilot was a job he knew he did well, and was something he had always enjoyed, even when, to Dartz, it had been the least important skill he'd possessed. But he couldn't imagine that even flying would sustain him forever. But for now, he supposed, it would be enough. 

The clouds, which until that point had been fluffy and white, had turned an ominous gray, and Alistair scooped up the book at his side and decided to return to the library to search for _Black Beauty_.    

     If the bench under the willow was his favorite place outside, the Kaiba family library, though seldom used anymore, was easily his favorite place in the house.

It was huge, two tiered, and paneled with the same dark wood as the bookshelves. The lighting was warm and emanated from old fashioned glass orbs.

He ascended the stairs to the second tier, lush dark green carpet muffling his footsteps.

After returning  _Beowulf_  to it's shelf, he realized that since the books were in alphabetical order by author he wouldn't be able to look for  _Black Beauty_  since he had no idea who had written it and left the library, careful to shut the lights off behind him before going to look for Trudy.

She wasn't in the kitchen and he was at a loss where to go next when she happened to walk up from the pantry.

"Oh! Alistair! You gave me a fright!" she exclaimed, throwing a hand dramatically over her heart.

"Sorry!" he apologized. "I was looking for you. I finished  _Beowulf_ so I went to look for  _Black Beauty_  in the library but I don't know the author's name."

"Oh, of course. It was written by a woman called Anna Sewell. But don't worry about it; I'll go get it for you. Like I said: I'm almost certain I still have a copy. I'll be right back. In the meantime could you go tell Mokuba that lunch is just about ready? Ever since he broke his leg he seems to have forgotten when lunch is and that it is to be eaten in the dining room not off the floor of his bedroom while he plays video games."

With that, she disappeared back downstairs, past the pantry, to what Alistair knew to be the apartment she shared with her husband, the groundskeeper, George.

Alistair meandered towards Mokuba's room, not excited to have to spend one-on-one time with him as they'd been avoiding each other since the motorcycle debacle.

As he approached Mokuba's room, he heard the sound of recorded gunfire. He opened the door as noisily as possible so as not to startle Mokuba who seemed to be fully immersed in his sniper game. He was seated on the floor in front of one of the giant TVs, his broken leg propped up on a pillow.

"Mokuba?" he called.

"Hang on!" Mokuba replied over the exaggeratedly loud crack of his rifle.

Alistair found himself counting to ten in his head to offset the feeling of panic that had started to form in the pit of his stomach. It was a game. It wasn't real.

Mokuba finally came to a save spot and paused."What's up?" he asked, turning with some effort. "Are you ok?" he added, and Alistair realized he was gripping onto the sideboard.

He quickly released it and waved the question away. "Trudy asked me to come get you for lunch."

"Tell her to bring it here."

"She told that you need come down to the dining room."

Mokuba childishly scrunched his nose up. "That's so far from here. Ugh, fine. I'll be down in a couple of minutes."

"Alright." He hesitated in the doorway. "Look, Mokuba, I'm really sorry about getting your leg broken and getting you in trouble with Kaiba. That obviously wasn't my intention."

Mokuba's face took on a drawn appearance not unlike the expression worn so often by his brother."I shouldn't have agreed to go. It was fun, but it made me realize that maybe Seto's right; I can't take care of myself well enough to do stuff like that." The mask cracked and Alistair could see how upset Mokuba really was.

"He's not right," Alistair said firmly. "I understand that he's trying to protect you. I'm an older brother too, I get it, but no matter how hard you try to keep the people you care about safe things are going to happen that are outside of your control and you still lose them! Eventually you're going to resent how he treats you and leave!" Alistair suddenly realized he was shouting and lowered his voice. "Kaiba has no excuse to keep you dependent on him. Or do you  _want_  to live in his shadow forever?" Wide-eyed, Mokuba shook his head. "Then you have to stand up to him, remind him that you're not a kid anymore, and that he should stop treating you like one." 

It was hard to imagine actually defying the unspoken spirit of his brother's wishes that he stay out of harm's way, but hearing someone tell him that maybe Seto was wrong gave Mokuba pause. Seto certainly didn't seem to think he was ever wrong about anything, and Mokuba had always taken for granted that that was true. But the idea that Seto might not be infallible after all gave him a thrill of excitement. 

* * *

 After lunch, Alistair had intended to start reading  _Black Beauty_ , but Mokuba asked if he'd play a video game with him, so after Trudy cleared the dishes and tutted at Alistair for not having finished his entire sandwich, the two went back upstairs to the game room.

"You can pick something," Mokuba said casually even though he was secretly bursting with enthusiasm. It had been months since he'd had anyone to game with, and he'd been dying for companionship outside of his tutors. "The ones on the second shelf are all multi-player."

Alistair scanned the titles, noting the thin layer of dust coating the tops of the boxes of the multi-player games. He selected a racing game which Mokuba eagerly loaded.

They played for two hours before Mokuba proposed playing something else. He was hoping to try his sniper game in two player mode, but the look on Alistair's face when he suggested it caused him to quickly retract the idea and silently scold himself for being so uncouth.

The fantasy fighting game they chose instead kept them occupied until dinnertime.

After dinner, Alistair begged off of playing more games and retreated to his room.

Lying on the couch, Alistair cracked open  _Black Beauty_  and started to read, hoping the book would give him something to do until Kaiba came home and he could confront him about setting up the aviation test.

He hadn't expected to find the novel very engrossing, but from the first pages, he couldn't put it down. All of the trials and tribulations Black Beauty had to endure, helpless to prevent any of the bad things from happening, trapped in a system that left him at the mercy of those in charge, were themes he was certainly familiar with, and with each new tragedy, the ache of empathy in his chest increased. 

It was in this moment of weakness that he realized Kaiba would be home soon and tried to pull himself together. He had just brushed several stray tears off his face and set the book aside when he heard tires on the gravel driveway.

After hastily washing his face off in the bathroom, Alistair made his way towards the foyer, hoping to catch Kaiba as he was walking through the door, but when he got there it was obvious that he'd missed him. Cursing softly that what he'd thought was going to be a simple task had turned into an unintentional game of hide and seek, he tried to think of where Kaiba might have gone. After ducking into the kitchen, the library, and the the gym, he finally, made his way towards the back of the house to the indoor pool.

The entrance to the pool was a large set of sliding french doors through which Alistair could smell the sickly sweet odor of chlorine and hear the echo of someone walking wetly on tile. It didn't occur to him that there was no reason to sneak around, and he took a moment to watch through the glass.

The pool was a beautiful swirling mixture of white, blue, and sea green tile which seemed to glow by the the yellow-white moonlight streaming in through a domed skylight.

Kaiba was standing with his back to him on one of two diving boards. Without his jacket and bravado as padding, Alistair saw that he was actually relatively skinny with the lean muscle and broad shoulders of a swimmer. As Kaiba prepared to dive into the pool, Alistair had just enough time to realize what he'd taken to be shadows were actually a series of crisscrossing scars across the plane of Kaiba's back.

As he flipped forwards, Seto caught sight of Alistair standing in the doorway, his surprise ruining his form. He surfaced quickly, swimming to the edge of the pool and hauling himself out.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded, quickly crossing his arms to hide his wrist. How  _dare_ Alistair violate his sanctuary when he'd gone to such care to ensure it was a place where he could drop his guard?

It ought to have been an easy opportunity to dish out a snippy retort, but Alistair found himself rather distracted by the droplets of water glistening on Kaiba's toned chest. 

"Well?" Seto insisted, crossing his arms more tightly and sharpening his glare when Alistair didn't immediately answer him.

Alistair forced himself to look at a point over Kaiba's left shoulder when he felt his eyes drifting lower down the lines of his body."Uh…I just..I just wanted to know whether you'd called the aviation school to set up a, uh, time for me to take, you know, the test you'd mentioned."

Seto raised an eyebrow. Alistair was obviously not as immune to his well-trained ability to intimidate people after all. "If I were you I'd work on my ability to communicate, Alistair. The answer to your question, however, is yes, I did. And the fact that you think I forgot is insulting. I talked to my old flight instructor and told him about your unusual circumstances and he has agreed to cut you a very illegal deal. If, as I suspect, he finds you to be competent, he'll award you a license at the graduation ceremony in November at which time I'll test you out myself. Is that a good enough answer for you?"

Alistair nodded mutely, his treacherous gaze back on Kaiba's chest.

Seto noticed where Alistair was looking and tensed. Had he seen the scars on his back and was he now looking for more? There was no way he could know about... But he needed to be sure. "There's nothing there!" he barked, and Alistair started. "And before you go jumping to conclusions, just know that anything you think you know about that is completely wrong."

Alistair felt heat rising in his face even though the air was quite cool. "If I didn't already know how self-centered you are I'd ask why you'd assume I was even looking at you in the first place," he snapped. "I'm not one of your fangirls, so you can keep your 'mystique' because I really couldn't care less."

Seto scowled, but his self-consciousness overrode his inclination to spar with him. "Glad we're in agreement then. Now get out, and never bother me here again."

"Gladly," Alistair responded with as much disdain as he could pour into the one word before turning on his heel and marching back into the passageway, not slowing down or turning back until he was sure he was out of Kaiba's line of sight.

Once Alistair was gone, Seto quickly dried himself off and prepared to return to his room to shower, noting how his hands shook as he reached for his towel. He clasped onto his wrist so that he could feel the raised lines against his palm, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Alistair didn't know anything. So maybe he'd seen his back, so what? Those could have come from anything-- a childhood accident perhaps. He exhaled, opened his eyes, and was satisfied to find that his hands were once again steady.

* * *

If he'd ever felt more embarrassed, Alistair couldn't remember it. It had always made his blood boil when Valon had called him 'Kaibasexual,' but now he found himself flushing as he realized that perhaps Valon had understood him better than he'd understood himself. He'd vehemently denied finding Kaiba attractive every time Valon had brought it up, and at the time he'd thought that was true. It hadn't mattered to him what Kaiba looked like because he hated him. Perhaps that hatred had simmered down to simple dislike, but that shouldn't have meant his perception would change so dramatically. And yet, just thinking about droplets of water running over smooth muscle made him feel hot all over again. 

 For the first time in recent memory, Alistair was not plagued by bad dreams that night. Instead, he had very vivid dreams of a completely different nature that left him just as shaken when he awoke as if he'd had a nightmare, but it was an altogether different type of disquiet. 


	5. The Business Meeting

_"Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life."_

~Samuel Johnson

**The Business Meeting**

When Alistair met up with Mokuba in the dining room for breakfast, he still hadn't quite gotten over what he'd done and was extremely embarrassed about it even though no one else would possibly be able to tell.

"Morning, Mokuba," he greeted him, avoiding meeting his eyes.

"Morning," Mokuba replied over a stack of pancakes coated with an alarming amount of syrup. "Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to maybe play video games with me again today."

"Sure."

"Oh, and at one Seto has a lunch with a potential new manufacturing partner and since I'm vice president, I'm going too. Do you want to come? The restaurant is really nice. It's Chinese."

The mere mention of Kaiba was enough to make Alistair blush scarlet and he hastily picked up a discarded newspaper Trudy had forgotten to move off the table and covered his face with it.

"Um…I'm not sure your brother would want me to go," he replied from behind the Duel Monsters' section.

Mokuba shook his head as he rolled up an entire pancake before devouring it in two large bites. "And you were telling  _me_  to stand up to him," he said thickly. "What's he going to do, have you thrown out? Don't worry about Seto, do you want to go or not?"

In all honesty, the answer was no for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that he'd stood under the shower that morning masturbating to the memory of Kaiba's abs. However, being able to get out of the house held appeal, and plus, maybe at the business meeting he could find a way to make Kaiba look bad and ruin the deal and prevent Kaiba Corp from profiting from the probable exploitation of the people working at the manufacturing company. Besides, Mokuba had a point; there was no way he was going to let himself be intimidated, for whatever reason, by Kaiba.

 

* * *

In preparation for his meeting with KD Au, CEO of Sapphire Technology with whom he was hoping to partner, Seto ran through his mental list of all the points he wanted to make at the meeting. He hated schmoozing but because he wanted Sapphire to manufacture the computer chips for the latest Duel Disk incarnation it was a necessary evil since he didn't trust anyone else to do it for him.

As the limo pulled up to the restaurant, he ran over his second mental list of Chinese etiquette and current events so as to put Mr. Au in good spirits.

He was directed to a private table to await the arrival of the other CEO. He idly perused the menu, hoping that Mokuba wouldn't show up late and create a bad first impression. To his astonishment and frustration, Mokuba, for whatever reason, had thought it was appropriate to bring Alistair with him. He should have known better than to bring anyone, but especially Alistair, to a business lunch.

"Hey, Seto!" Mokuba greeted his stony-faced brother. "I hope it's ok that I brought Alistair." He blinked innocently up at him.

Seto sighed. One look at Alistair told him that the man would undoubtedly try to cause trouble.

"Mokuba, you had no business bringing him with you, but you knew that, didn't you?" His second comment was directed at Alistair, who still wasn't able to look him in the eyes. "Look, Au's going to be here any minute, so I don't have time to deal with you." He signaled a nearby waiter over. "Please find my… _friend_  a table and add his bill to my tab." The waiter, sensing the tension, and familiar with the businessman's temperament, merely nodded and mumbled "yessir," before guiding Alistair to a small table on the other side of the restaurant.

"I'll be right with you," the waiter promised before hurrying off. While he was gone, Alistair cracked open the heavy leather-bound menu on the table and noted that there were no prices listed; an upscale establishment to be sure. That anyone could make enough money that they didn't need to know how much something cost before buying it was an unbelievable show of conspicuous consumption. Still, if that's the way Kaiba wanted it, he had no problem taking advantage.

When the waiter, a man in his early twenties named Feng, returned to take Alistair's order and bring him a glass of water, Alistair pointed at a random item on the menu. Food was food, and he wasn't even paying for it so it didn't matter much to him what it was anyway.

Mokuba was horribly bored by the meeting since most of it was just exchanging pleasantries, and the rest dealt with actually making an agreement, all of which was conducted in Cantonese, a language he had only just started learning. His presence was mostly what was required at meetings like this and Seto did almost all of the talking. He knew he was supposed to be paying attention, but instead found himself daydreaming about Hillary while absentmindedly chewing his food.

Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, the check arrived and Seto and Mr. Au prepared to say goodbye. Business cards were exchanged and upon leaving the restaurant, both businessmen appeared to be pleased with the deal.

"Seto, we have to get Alistair," Mokuba reminded him.

The artificial half-smile Seto had plastered on his face slid off to be replaced by a scowl."Oh, right. Mokuba, why did you bring him? You realize that not only was it a private lunch date, if he would have sat with us, it would have wrecked the deal, don't you?" Mokuba's naivety was astonishing to him.

"Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't even think about it being rude, I just wanted someone to talk to."

Seto sharply exhaled through his nose in frustration. "This isn't a game Mokuba, this is  _business_. Do you think I really give a damn about him or his family? Of course not, not any more than he really cared about my health or your broken leg; it's just part of how business works. It's not supposed to be fun or interesting, and mostly it is, as you say, boring, but it's what pays for the food we ate today, for your hospital bills, for your tutors, your clothes, your games. Do you understand? Your attitude could be the thing that makes the difference between a yes and a no. If he would have noticed you weren't paying attention today, I might not have been able to make the deal."

Mokuba hung his head. "I understand. I'm sorry."

"And don't  _ever_  bring Alistair to a meeting like this again. Not only is it completely inappropriate, he _cannot_ be seen with me. Ever. And more importantly, I don't trust him. Or have you forgotten that he almost got us killed?" Chagrined, Mokuba shook his head. "Good. Now let's get him and get out of here; the lights in this place are giving me a headache and I still have to deal with PR and Marketing today."

The thought alone was enough to onset a migraine because the outcome would probably involve him having to give a public statement. He also had to decide what to do about the stupid clothing company wanting him to be the face of their fall line. They had offered quite a lot of money, but he abhorred the idea of modeling for them, although Tanaka seemed to think it was a good idea. Something about him being seen as a hot celebrity getting girls to buy duel disks or something else nonsensical like that. So he'd probably end up agreeing despite his own feelings about it.

* * *

 Alistair had no idea even after eating his meal what it had been, but it had been delicious, as was his dessert, and he in no way regretted having come with Mokuba to lunch even though he'd been exiled by Kaiba from his table, and he'd chatted with Feng every time he came to refill his water. Not even seeing a surly looking Kaiba with Mokuba in tow coming to 'collect' him, as Kaiba put it, could dampen his spirits.

"Before we leave, do you have some money I could give Feng?" he asked, more so addressing Mokuba.

"Who?" Kaiba asked, and Mokuba looked equally confused.

"Our waiter, or at least, my waiter. I had a really nice conversation with him, and you're supposed to tip waiters if they do a good job, and he did, so…" he trailed off before he got out of his depth.

Kaiba continued to look at him blankly. "I already gave a tip; it's built into the bill."

"Right, so then that's normal, but I wanted to give something extra because I liked him."

Kaiba rolled his eyes. "Just for your information, what you're suggesting is a complete waste of money, and it's stupid. Additionally, you seem to be confused about the nature of this arrangement. I'm not your piggy bank. And the next time you think about asking me for an allowance, don't. Meet us out back in 10 minutes unless you'd prefer to walk."

"I'll keep that in mind," Alistair told Kaiba's retreating back.

After loitering in the restaurant's lobby and tricking himself into thinking he was being stared at, Alistair followed Kaiba's directions to meet them in back of the restaurant, but as he headed for the car, a commotion by the dumpsters caught his attention. A heavy bag of trash had just fallen out of an overstuffed container and spilled onto the concrete. A little calico cat, which had evidently knocked it over, leapt to the ground and began sniffing around for food.

"Alistair!" Kaiba called from the car, rolling the window down. "As fascinating as I'm sure shopping for your dream home is, do it on your own time." He'd had meant it as an insult, but Alistair was barely listening.

"Hang on." Trying not to scare her, Alistair slowly made his way towards the cat, which, upon closer inspection, seemed little more than a kitten. She watched him warily, her yellow eyes following his movements, but didn't run away. He very gradually knelt down and reached out a hand for her to smell. She cautiously edged out from behind an empty carton and approached him, sniffing his hand and licking his palm which apparently had sauce on it. He scratched her behind her ears, enticing her to come closer, and as his fingers worked their way behind both ears, under her chin, and down her thin back, she started to purr. Sensing Kaiba's impatience, and afraid he'd yell again and startle her, Alistair threw caution to the winds and picked her up. She yowled and hissed in surprise and protest, her claws raking painfully across his hands. He gritted his teeth, but redoubled his efforts to hold on to her, and after a brief struggle, she quieted as he held her against his chest with one arm, and continued to stroke her head with his free hand. Just that moment, Kaiba chose to speak again.

"This isn't a petting zoo! Put it down and get in the car!"

Alistair ignored the part about putting the cat down, and walked to the car, still cradling her in his arms as she purred.

"You are  _not_ taking that with us," Seto said flatly, eyeing the cat with irrational dislike. "It's dirty and probably has lice or ticks or God only knows what else."

"I'll take care of her."

Seto snorted. "Please, you can barely take care of yourself. Plus, I'd have to pay for food and veterinary bills. No thanks."

Alistair hugged her more firmly. "I'll pay you back. Once I have a job, I'll pay back any money you have to spend on her."

"Oh come on, Seto, she's cute," Mokuba put in.

Past Alistair, Seto noticed several people lurking around the edge of the building with their phones out. "Fine," he agreed, his gaze shifting back to Alistair. "But if I have to listen to Trudy complaining about having to get cat hair off the furniture, or if it scratches the couches, or if you can't train it, it's out. Now  _get in the car_."

Pacified, Alistair slid in next to Mokuba who immediately held out his hand which the cat sniffed, then licked.

"That tickles!" Mokuba giggled. "She's so cute! But she is kind of dirty though; she's getting dust all over your shirt."

"I don't mind," Alistair murmured, contented by the calico's warm weight in his lap and against his stomach. "I'm just glad that I can help her. No one should have to eat garbage."


	6. An Inconvenient Truth

_"_ _We pick and choose our weapons carefully_

_Words are twisted like a fist_

_Behind our backs no slight-of-hand_

_No battle ever ended with a kiss"_

_~Ties that Bind,_ Pat Benatar

**An Inconvenient Truth**

For the next few weeks, the little cat Alistair rescued from the restaurant dumpsters took up all of his time. He'd decided quite quickly that he wanted to name her Sewell after the author of  _Black Beauty_. It would have shocked Valon and Rafael to see how maternal and soft their tightly wound teammate could be, but Alistair took much delight in nursing Sewell back to health.

She had received a warm reception from Trudy after Alistair had given her a bath (an endeavor that had left him with a multitude of nasty scratches), and he'd gone on his motorcycle to the local pet store to discuss what he might need for her and to buy some supplies and food.

By the time she'd been at the Kaiba mansion for three weeks, Sewell's sides had started to fill out and her coat had become glossy and soft. After taking her to a vet, Alistair was told that she was likely around two years old, had already been spayed but needed shots, and that the several lumpy scars on her back were most likely the result of having been hit with something and not having the wounds properly cared for.

Knowing that Sewell had come from a rough background made Alistair feel even more attached to the dainty calico, and he rarely went anywhere without her. He often walked around the house with her in his arms or scampering after him, completely devoted to the human who had saved her.

At first, Mokuba had been excited about having a pet in the house, but when Sewell proved too skittish to play with, he bored of her. For his part, Seto took every opportunity to ridicule Alistair for his unconditional devotion to the cat, although deep down he was oddly jealous.

At night Sewell slept either on Alistair's pillow above his head, or under the covers when she felt so inclined. Her presence helped alleviate his nightmares he found. When he did have them (which he still did, and more often than most people), she could sense his anguish and would rub her nose against his face until he woke up and then sleep on his pillow, her purring lulling him back into a more pleasant sleep. He also continued to dream about Kaiba. He abhorred these dreams because he by no accounts wanted to view Kaiba that way. He loathed the feeling that came over him whenever Kaiba was around. The whole situation was ridiculous and embarrassing, and he hoped it would soon pass.

* * *

As PR had predicted, sales went up after Seto gave in and modeled for the clothing company. The ads ran in all the major fashion and dueling magazines, and were up on two billboards in downtown Domino.

The photographer had requested the use of his office at KC headquarters as the backdrop to the shoot, and in the end, the ad that ran was a picture of him lounging in his monogrammed leather desk chair in front of one of his shelves of trophies, smirking and holding up his three Blue Eyes White Dragon cards. The tagline read: 'Dress like a Champion.'

Seto couldn't fathom why such a stupid photo of him modeling a suit would get a bunch of teenage girls to buy game systems, but apparently it did. He shuddered to think of the ad being put on the walls of girls his brother's age when all he wanted was for it to disappear.

* * *

Just over a month and a half after Alistair had moved into the mansion, Seto was working on logistics in his home office when Mokuba knocked tentatively on the door before letting himself in.

"What is it, Mokuba?" Seto asked when instead of speaking his brother dawdled in the doorway.

"I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to the mall tomorrow."

"You can't," Seto replied without looking up from his screen. "Roland's helping me at the office tomorrow all day tomorrow, Saito has to come with me to the board meeting, it's Kanzo's day off, and I think you know better than to go with Alistair."

"I wasn't really asking," Mokuba said quietly.

That got Seto's attention."Excuse me?" He looked over at his brother whose posture made it clear that he was uncomfortable, but his words were, for Mokuba, quite firm.

"A girl I like is working and I want to ask her out now that my leg's healed. I sort of thought that might go better if I went by myself."

Seto raised an eyebrow. It wasn't like Mokuba to go against what he said. And what was this about a girl?

"Mokuba," he started, "it's not safe for you to go by yourself; you know that. Just wait until next weekend when Saito can go with you."

"I'm fourteen, you know," Mokuba argued softly. "When you were my age you had almost reached a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and you knew how to shoot a gun. How come you never let me learn that stuff? "

It was so out of left field for Mokuba to be making such accusatory statements, for his disgruntled frown told Seto that's what they were. But accusations of what? "What are you talking about?" he demanded in confusion. "I don't want you to have to know any of those things."

"Don't you think I should be able to decide that sort of thing for myself?" Mokuba had gone from looking uncomfortable to clenching his jaw and glaring at the floor. 

Still completely bewildered, Seto ventured to smooth over his brother's inexplicable anger."Look, Mokuba, once you're older it'll make sense to you."

"What does that even mean?" Mokuba cut in. "When will I be old enough to go to the _mall_ by myself? I don't know what reality you're living in, but in mine it's how you meet people and make friends. I don't mind having the tutors and stuff, but since I don't go to school I don't ever get to hang out with anyone my age and you're always busy so it gets really lonely..."

So that was what this was really about. Seto regarded the sad frown tugging his brother's mouth downwards. That Mokuba's loneliness had escaped his notice caused an ache of melancholy in his chest. But still, he was wary of sending his brother into the world alone. 

"Hmmm…I'll ask around and see if any of the department managers have kids your age."

"No," Mokuba said emphatically. "Don't you get it? What I'm saying is that you have no right to control everything I do!" His voice continued to rise with every word. "I'm not going to let you boss me around like you do everyone else!" He abruptly turned on his heel and stalked out of the office, leaving an astonished Seto at his desk.

What the hell had gotten into Mokuba all of a sudden? And why did what he had said sound so familiar? He puzzled over it for the next few minutes when it finally hit him. His hands tightened into fists and found that he was practically shaking with anger. How dare Alistair try to undermine his relationship with Mokuba! 

* * *

 Alistair had been lying on the couch re-reading  _Black Beauty_  with Sewell on his stomach when Kaiba whipped the door open so hard it hit the wall with a loud bang. Sewell yowled in surprise, leapt off the sofa, and streaked under the bed, her claws raking along Alistair's torso in the process. Hissing in pain, Alistair quickly dropped the book.

"What?" he asked in annoyance, sitting up and pressing his hand against the scratches that were already starting to ooze blood.

"I  _warned_  you not to interfere with how I choose to raise Mokuba!" Seto snarled at him, marching into the room with his hands balled into fists.

"What are you talking about?" Alistair demanded, backing away so he wasn't trapped behind the coffee table.

"You're telling me that you  _didn't_ tell him I was purposefully keeping him dependent on me, and that he shouldn't let himself get bossed around?" Kaiba's disbelief was practically palpable. "Because that doesn't sound like Mokuba, Alistair; it sounds like  _you_. After everything I've done for you, how  _dare_  you try to pit my brother against me?"

"That's not what I was trying to do," Alistair answered civilly as he moved to stand behind the couch. "Open your eyes. He's not a child anymore, and your 'protection' is only going to make him resent you."

"At least  _my_  brother's still alive," Seto growled through gritted teeth. It was a low blow, and although it hurt, Alistair had anticipated it.

"Is that the best you can do?" Alistair rested one arm nonchalantly on the back of the couch. "Come on, Kaiba. He's growing up whether you like it or not, and I can't believe you're surprised he wants to start doing things on his own. And if you don't let him go, don't you think he's probably going to do it anyway and just not tell you? Blame me if you want, but keep going like this, and you're going to end up without even Mokuba as a fan." 

Seto stiffened. He wouldn't have been able to put words to it, but that was exactly what he was most afraid of. He felt suddenly as naked as he had the night before at the pool and resisted the urge to run his thumb along his wrist. How was it that Alistair could see that so easily? 

"As though I care about that," Seto scoffed. "I don't need anyone to 'like' me."

"Oh, spare me," Alistair scoffed right back. "If that were really true you wouldn't insist on always being the center of attention. But fine, if you want, we can replace 'like' with 'worship.'" When Kaiba flared his nostrils, he smirked and added: "has anyone ever told you you're kind of cute when you're angry?"

Seto set his jaw, intending to deliver a scathing retort to salve his dented pride before throwing Alistair unceremoniously out of the house to fend for himself.

Alistair stared defiantly back into Kaiba's face, waiting for him to say something. He had the distinct impression he was about to lose his current lodgings and while the comfort had been pleasant, perhaps it was just as well. It was really too bad about the pilot's license though; that would have been nice. But really, he didn't need any handouts from Kaiba. Especially Kaiba.

Though it had only lasted ten seconds, the silence seemed to stretch on for much longer.  _Get out_. That was what Seto wanted to say, and by all accounts knew he should say, but if those words were to come out of his mouth, Alistair would not only get out of his house, he'd get out of his life for good. And why wouldn't he want Alistair out of his life? The man had done nothing but cause him trouble and had even tried to kill him, and Mokuba, yet he found himself incapable of saying the two simple words that would end the tedious affair. Alistair knew him too well.

Over the years, Alistair had seen many expressions flit across Kaiba's face that the latter had most certainly meant to keep hidden, and was surprised to see a slight furrowing of his brow and a momentary narrowing of his eyes. Why would Kaiba, whose biting snark was legendary, have to think about how to respond to so insulting a taunt? 

 _Say something!_  almost every fiber of Seto's being screamed. But something seemed to have nailed his tongue firmly to the floor of his mouth.

Alistair was nothing if not patient, the long years he'd waited to duel Kaiba were testament to that, but he also had an impulsive streak. And he had the sudden impression that perhaps...

He took an experimental step in Kaiba's direction, scanning his features for some indication of what he was thinking.

As with his tongue, Seto found that he'd lost control of his legs as well, leaving him dumb and immobilized, unable to do more than watch as Alistair crept slowly closer to him, his expression one of uncertainty.

He had seen Kaiba up close dozens of times over the years, had studied practically every pore on his face, was all but intimately familiar with the shell pink of his lips. But none of that had prepared Alistair for the feeling that came over him once he drew close enough that he could feel Kaiba's warm breath on his cheek. There was panic in Kaiba's eyes now, and yet still, he hadn't moved.

Though he knew what Alistair was going to do, it wasn't until he felt the light, tentative pressure of Alistair's lips against his mouth that Seto regained control of his body. He reeled backwards and tripped over his own foot, his hands, shaking as they had been the night Alistair had surprised him at the pool, held in front of him defensively. White hot revulsion coursed through his body like poison even as in his stomach there flared a momentary spark of pleasure that urged him forward.

"Why did you do that?" he asked stupidly, realizing with some relief that he'd regained control of his tongue as well as his legs.

"I wanted to," Alistair replied with much more composure than he actually felt -- his stomach was flip-flopping painfully. He had no idea what to make of Kaiba's reaction. He'd been so sure that the tension in the room had come from them both, had thought that for the briefest of instants, Kaiba had kissed him back. And even though he appeared to have horribly misread those signals, Kaiba seemed more disturbed than he felt the act warranted.

Before Alistair could say anything more, Seto, not caring that it was cowardly, turned on his heel and fled into the hallway as quickly as possible without actually breaking into a run.

As the door clicked shut, Alistair rested his fingertips on his mouth. What did it mean?

Sewell emerged from under the bed and meowed.

"What do you think?" he asked her.

* * *

Back in his office, Seto paced back and forth. Now that he was no longer under the oppressive atmosphere of  _that_ room, he was forced to examine the situation. He was horrified to think he had in any way contributed to it. Had he reacted? He tried to recall. Piercing silver eyes. Brief pressure against his mouth. And yes, yes he had returned that pressure. He reached the wall of the room, pivoted, and paced back again. But that was surely just what one did when one was kissed. An automatic reaction. A reflex. Just as it had been when he'd... He quickly shoved the memory away. This had been nothing like  _that_. Alistair, for all that Seto couldn't stand him, was nothing like Gozaburo. And Seto wasn't twelve anymore. Which meant that this had been something different.

Or had it been? He pivoted again, realizing vaguely that the only light in the room was coming from the lamp on his desk. Alistair was from across the border after all; maybe he was playing some kind of long game so he wouldn't be deported. Seto paused in front of his desk and drummed his fingers absently on the surface. No, that didn't make sense. Alistair wouldn't be causing so much trouble if his intention was to seduce him; he was smarter than that. So was this perhaps a part of the vengeance he had been so prone to ranting about? But to what end? If he really knew nothing of the life Seto had had behind the closed doors of the estate, he would have had no way of knowing what kind of reaction to expect. Seto could just as well have hit him and thrown him out into the street.  _Which I should still do_ , he reminded himself dutifully. He didn't mean it, though, which brought him back to the other element at play: himself. The disgust, he understood. His strange paralysis and the spark of (but it couldn't have been) pleasure, he didn't. He absentmindedly changed the rhythm he was drumming against the desk top.

He'd frozen up when he'd discovered he didn't actually want to kick Alistair out, no matter how annoyed he'd been. It was similar to how Wheeler made him feel, he realized suddenly, his fingers resting momentarily as he allowed himself to digest the new piece of information. The implication caused him to begin pacing again. It simply couldn't be.

 Halting in front of his bed, Seto stared vacantly at his closed door.  _This is ridiculous!_ His next lap led him all the way from bed to the bathroom. As he pivoted at the shower, he couldn't help but notice his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Even though he looked at himself every morning; scrutinizing his image to make sure he looked perfectly put-together, he'd never focused on his mouth before. Now, though, he raised his fingers to rest briefly on his lips and wondered again:  _why would he want to do that?_

* * *

After waking up to the feeling of complete humiliation that accompanied Kaiba's rejection of him, Alistair had hidden in his room until he'd seen Kaiba's limo pull out of the driveway, and had even waited another fifteen minutes after that to go downstairs in case Kaiba had forgotten anything and had to double back.

He was sitting in the dining room,waiting for Trudy to come up with breakfast, and reading  _A Tale of Two Cities_  with Sewell on his lap when Mokuba bounded into the room.

"Morning, Alistair!" he greeted him brightly.

"Morning." Alistair set the book on top of his dictionary.

"Guess what? I talked to Seto and told him I'm going to go to the mall by myself today. I did just what you said, and even though he tried to argue with me, I said I was going anyway." Mokuba's held more than a note of pride.

It became suddenly clear what Kaiba had been so irate about the night before, though Alistair couldn't bear to let the memory play out again in its entirety and quickly shut it away.

"That's really great, Mokuba."

"Right? This will be the first time I'll have a chance to maybe ask Hillary out!" Mokuba exclaimed, actually bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement.

"Good morning, gents," Trudy said, interrupting the conversation by entering the room with breakfast. She set the two trays on the table, one for Mokuba, and one with food for herself and for Alistair. She sat down and the three of them began their meal with Alistair setting aside small bits of sausage for Sewell.

* * *

Seto Kaiba was not the kind of man to get distracted from his work. Dedicated would be an understatement, and he was always his harshest critic, straining himself to do even more so that his productivity was perpetually maximized. This particular day however, Seto couldn't focus. He would look at a memo or start to tweak the duel disk design and then five minutes later realize that he hadn't been paying the slightest bit of attention. What had happened the night before between himself and Alistair was so far out of his frame of reference that he found he had spent much more of his day trying to unravel that mystery than getting any actual work done.

Abandoning the pretext that he was reading the email on the screen in front of him, Seto sat back in his chair and allowed himself to stare absently at the dark, paneled ceiling. He supposed he should have foreseen this to some degree. Sex. But he'd made the miscalculation that he was different. That something like that didn't apply to him. And up until this point, it hadn't.

Seto had never liked being touched ( _Especially not since…_ ). Even Mokuba only received minimal physical affection from him. He acknowledged that to some degree his mentality that intimacy was unnecessary came from Gozaburo, but some of it, he felt, was a result of his job. Someone in his position was always subject to being taken advantage of. Even people who, like Yugi, didn't seem to be out to pull one over on him were a threat because he could never be sure that one day it wouldn't turn out that Yugi was only using him, or trying to, just like everybody else.

But in that moment he'd felt something mingled with the anger that was always smoldering just under the surface. Desire. There existed within him a primal craving now, something he could feel in his gut. It had lain there, dormant, for years, but he could tell that while it was lying low for now, it was certainly capable of flaring up again.

Which brought him nicely to the heart of the matter: Alistair. Alistair had instigated the entire affair which, after several hours of analysis, led Seto to believe that he'd at least been thinking about it beforehand, although why, he couldn't fathom. It had been clear to him from day one that Alistair reviled him, and yet...and yet he'd kissed him. " _I wanted to_." It made no sense!

* * *

When Mokuba got home from the mall, Alistair was sitting in his usual spot under the willow with Sewell lurking nearby, attempting to catch a butterfly. Running full-tilt through the garden, Mokuba came to a skidding halt beside the stone bench.

"She said yes!" he announced triumphantly, smiling broadly.

Alistair carefully bookmarked  _A Tale of Two Cities_ and set it on his lap."Really?" he asked in surprise.

Mokuba nodded. "Yeah. I just went up to the counter and after I'd ordered my food I told her that it must suck having to give other people food all day without getting to eat any yourself, and so—wait for it—then I said: 'so maybe you'd like to be the one to get served some time.' And she smiled and asked if I was asking her out and I said yes, and then she said she'd like that and then the guy behind me in line got annoyed that I was standing there talking to her, and so I told her I'd write my number down on a napkin and give it to her so that we can set something up, and yeah," Mokuba pause for breath. "That was basically it. Now I just have to wait for her to text me. Pretty cool, huh?" He put his hands on his hips expectantly.

"I…yeah, definitely."

Mokuba pursed his lips and let his arms fall to his sides. "You could at least pretend to be excited for me."

"I am," Alistair insisted. "It's just that…and don't take this the wrong way, but are you sure it's not just because you're Mokuba Kaiba?"

"What do you mean?" Mokuba asked, stung, although deep down, he'd wondered the same thing. "Are you saying she's only interested because of my money? I'm not just some spoiled brat, you know. I'm pretty smart, and I think I can be funny, and maybe I'm even good-looking, so she doesn't just have to be interested because of my name! _Ugh_! You sound like Seto!" With that, Mokuba stormed off, leaving Alistair feeling guilty for having ruined Mokuba's moment of triumph. The kid had a point: what he'd said was exactly the kind of thing he could imagine Kaiba saying, and that he'd in any way been channeling Kaiba left a bitter taste in his mouth and he resolved to apologize. But he instinctively knew to let Mokuba lick his wounds first.

Mokuba stomped back to his room. What did Alistair know? Hillary would never try to take advantage of him. She always laughed at his jokes and listened when he talked, and had seemed genuinely interested in going out with him. Alistair didn't know what he was talking about! He'd said himself he'd never had a girlfriend before.

His cell phone buzzed and he quickly pulled it out of his pocket, his anger forgotten, but it turned out to just be a curt text from Seto chastising him for not telling him that he'd gotten home safely. Annoyed, he tossed his phone onto his bed. Couldn't anyone just be happy for him? Was no one going to acknowledge that he'd successfully asked out a girl on his first try?

 _They're just jealous_ , he reasoned.  _They're mad that I'm going to get a girlfriend before them even though they're older_. Pacified, he retrieved his phone, texted his brother an apology, then settled in for a couple of hours of playing his sniper game before thinking about tackling the rest of his homework.

After Mokuba left, Alistair had tried to get back into his novel, but soon realized that the interruption had shaken loose the feeble barrier he'd been attempting to maintain so he wouldn't obsess over what had happened the night before. He lay back on the sun-warmed stone of the bench, using  _A Tale of Two Cities_  as a makeshift pillow. It was an idiotic thing to have done, he chastised himself, not for the first time that day. Had he really expected Kaiba to throw his arms around him before heartily kissing him back? On some level, yes. He closed his eyes in embarrassment as he remembered how Kaiba had so soundly rebuffed him. Would he ever be able to face him again? He'd been  _so sure_  he'd felt something. Kaiba'd had every opportunity to walk away and hadn't, right?

Alistair opened his eyes and sat up, squinting against the light. Oh, who was he fooling? Kaiba'd felt nothing at all. He'd just been angry. And wasn't it just as well? Now, perhaps, Alistair could focus his attention on something more important than childish fantasies in which Kaiba had kissed him back. It was  _Kaiba_ , after all. The same Kaiba who so callously ran the corporation that was slowly enveloping the entire country in its shadow. The same Kaiba who didn't care about anyone's well-being but his own. Who looked down on him and taunted him...and had taken him in and offered to jump-start his life despite everything Alistair had done.

Whether it was because of Mokuba's influence or not, Alistair couldn't get out from under the glaring flaw in his assessment that Kaiba was the embodiment of evil. Given that, how could he proceed? Quietly, he decided. He was used to being a fly on the wall, and it was a role he felt he ought to return to in order to protect the opportunity he now had dangling in front of him to finally have a normal life. It might not be a life full of excitement or even a life of particular value, but after his topsy-turvy upbringing, it might be just as well. And he loved flying, so a career as a pilot was far better than anything he could have conceived for himself. For that reason alone, he would lay low, ride out his remaining time at the estate demurely, avoid Kaiba at all costs, and then walk off-stage into the blissful banality of the life Kaiba had promised him. He could only hope he still had the possibility of falling under the radar after so dramatically drawing attention to himself by (he could scarcely force himself to even think about it) kissing the man he'd only recently attempted to murder. He prayed to whoever might be listening that Kaiba would suffer amnesia in the near future and forget about it.

The sun went behind a cloud, casting the bench more completely in shadow. Alistair shivered slightly and decided to head back inside for the evening. It had been enough time that he felt he could reasonably approach Mokuba to apologize for wounding his pride, so he resolved to pay the teen a visit before returning to his room to finish off his book before dinnertime.

As he picked his way through the garden to the back terrace, it struck him again how odd it was to have to keep track of something like 'dinnertime.' It had been years since anyone had held him accountable for something so domestic. Even having to worry about hurting Mokuba's feelings was strange. He'd spent the past seven years bickering with Valon and Raphael over everything from who had the strongest target to whose turn it was to give a progress report to Dartz, or picking on each other out of sheer boredom during their long hours of surveillance. And if any of them had ever apologized to each other he certainly didn't remember it. But in this case, he actually did care if Mokuba was angry with him and actually wanted to make amends. Strange.

When Mokuba heard a knock on the door, he assumed it would be Trudy with the snack he'd called down for.

"Come in!" he called.

"Hey." The voice belonged to Alistair, and the accompanying meow indicated that Sewell wasn't far behind.

Mokuba frowned. He wasn't interested in another lecture. "Come in," he allowed reluctantly, and Alistair tentatively opened the door and stepped into the game room. .

"Look," he began uncertainly when he saw that Mokuba wasn't even going to pause his game. "I wanted to apologize for what I said to you earlier. I do think it's cool that she said yes; I wouldn't even know where to begin if I had to ask a girl out on a date, s we to question her motivation?" He paused to who am I to judge her motivation?" He paused to pick up Sewell, who was rubbing her nose against his pant leg. "Besides, you're absolutely right: you are smart, and kind, and a really good gamer—why wouldn't she be interested?"

"I'm kind of good-looking too," Mokuba added with mock superciliousness, his spirits lifting considerably, pausing his video game at last and turning around.

Alistair smiled. "See? What do I know? You're the expert, not me."

Mokuba bit his cheek thoughtfully. Now that Alistair had proven he was willing to concede his jealousy, Mokuba was inclined to help him out."You know, Hillary might have an older sister. If she does, I could always ask if she'd go on a date with you." Mokuba was proud that for once he was the one with connections instead of his brother. "Oh, but I guess I'd probably have to ask Seto first. You know, in case he was interested."

Alistair unconsciously clenched his jaw at the thought and tightened his grip around Sewell such that she meowed indignantly at the sudden rough treatment.

"Oh, but I mean, if you really wanted…" Mokuba backtracked, misunderstanding the grounds for the micro expression.

"What?" Alistair relaxed his arms and stroked Sewell between her ears. "Oh. No, I'm not. Don't worry about it."

"How come? You saw how pretty Hillary is; I'm sure if she has a sister she's really pretty too."

"I…"

As Alistair shifted uncomfortably, Mokuba had a sudden thought.

"This is kind of a personal question," Mokuba began carefully, "but do you not like girls, Alistair?"

Alistair blanched and then reddened. "I uh…I…No. I guess I don't. Not really," he mumbled, his cheeks practically the same color as his hair.

"Oh." Mokuba didn't know what to say to that. He had no real opinion on the subject, but the notion that Alistair would want to do with men what he wanted to do with Hillary, took him aback. For about twenty seconds, the only sound other than the background music of Mokuba's game was Sewell's purring.

"I should probably go feed her," Alistair said finally. "I'll see ya." He fled before he could be asked anything else. The question wouldn't have embarrassed him so much if he wasn't basing his answer off of how he felt around Kaiba. But he was. " _Maybe you're just Kaibasexual."_  Wherever Valon was now, Alistair hoped he was miserable.

* * *

Normally Seto wouldn't leave work until almost midnight, and sometimes even later, but by nine he'd realized there was no point in staying any longer, so he decided to clock out early. Valerie, who was also packing to leave, looked up in surprise when Seto emerged from his office. Without offering any type of explanation, Seto swept past her and out the door. His presence caused several startled employees on the ground floor who were meandering towards the door to snap to attention, but Seto paid them little heed.

Alfred was waiting for him in the company parking garage, a moonbeam illuminating the limo's glossy black finish. As the car pulled out onto the street, Seto pondered whether or not he wanted to continue with the service. He quite enjoyed driving, and he found having to wait for Alfred--even if it had only ever happened once or twice--tedious. Mokuba would still need access to the car, at least for a few more years, but for himself, Seto thought he might switch to his Porsche. He'd had half a mind to trade the car in for something less flashy after his brother had chosen it for him in San Francisco, but he'd grown rather fond of it even if red was hardly his color.

He glanced out the window and was annoyed to see that they hadn't even made it to the highway yet. He supposed that's what he got for trying to leave early. At the rate they were going he'd just end up getting home the same time he would have if he'd left at half past ten as he normally would have. Yes, he decided, the Porsche was definitely the way to go. None of this namby-pamby grandfatherly nonsense: ne needed a driver with nerve, who wouldn't be cowed by the prospect of driving at a speed that would actually get their adrenaline pumping. In other words: he needed to drive himself.

After casting around for another topic to distract himself, and even trying to absently watch the highway out the window, Seto was unable to procrastinate his more immediate problem anymore and finally turned his attention to what he ought to do once he got home.

He loathed the notion that Alistair should have any kind of control over him, loathed that he was knowingly allowing himself to be manipulated, and of course, he loathed himself for humoring the spark of pleasure he'd felt for that split second right after Alistair had done it. It hadn't been much, and Alistair had probably only done it to shock him into forgetting to follow-up on his threat or God only knew what other reason, but ultimately, it made no difference. If Alistair was trying to play him, it was a pretty pathetic play seeing as how no one would ever believe him if he told them. And for all his faults, Seto seriously doubted that was Alistair's angle. Outspokenly self-righteous he might be, but almost because of that, Seto found it hard to imagine Alistair giving some tabloid interview.

Seto absently tapped each finger, one at a time, against the car's window frame. He had never been one to fidget; such an unnecessary and obvious emotional conceit. But alone in the backseat with no one to see him but the traffic lights, he relaxed his control a fraction. He needed all of his concentration for the task at hand. What was he going to do about Alistair?

He arrived at the estate shortly after ten. Kanzo expressed surprise at seeing his boss home so early, but Seto made no comment. As he entered the garage to park the car, his headlights illuminated Alistair's motorcycle parked in the corner.

 _He put Mokuba in danger_ , Seto reminded himself. _He's always disrespecting me, my company. I have no reason to want to...I don't want to! He's a snake and a_ , he could hear Gozaburo's gruff voice in his head now, _a fag. Any real man would have beaten him for daring something so disgusting_.

Upon entering the house, he first went to Mokuba's room, knowing that his brother would undoubtedly still be awake.

"Seto?" Mokuba said questioningly, shocked to see his brother standing in his doorway. "You're home early." The event was practically unprecedented.

"You should have texted me once you got back today," Seto said. "You told me that you would."

"I know, I'm sorry. I forgot." But despite his brother's chastisement, Mokuba couldn't help but add: "Hillary said yes!"

"I know. You messaged me a whole paragraph about it," Seto responded in mild exasperation.

"Isn't that cool, though?" Mokuba looked hopefully up at his older brother. "I'm thinking about maybe taking her to the movies or something. It's been ages since I've been, and I know that that's what a lot of people do on their first date."

Seto pitied his brother his naivety sometimes. He could tell that Mokuba was excited, but he was wary of this girl's intentions, and didn't want Mokuba to get hurt.

"Mokuba," he started, a note of caution in his voice.

Mokuba's face became drawn as his smile slowly faded. "I know, I know. You're going to say that she's just using me. And maybe she is, but so what? I'm not stupid; I'll figure it out. And hey, maybe she isn't. Maybe she actually likes me, is that really so unreasonable?"

Seto could see that his brother desperately wanted his approval and against his better judgment, he relented. "No. Just be careful. And go to bed Mokuba: it's late."

"It's only ten O'clock!" Mokuba protested incredulously to his brother's retreating back. "I haven't gone to bed this early since I was _eleven_."

Outside of Mokuba's room, Seto found himself dallying in the hallway, revulsion and longing rooting him to the spot. Turning left would bring him to that room. He hated that room. But Alistair was in that room. But he hated Alistair too.

Finally, with distressing difficulty, Seto forced himself to turn right.


	7. The Interview

 The will to win, the spark within

 The strength within the hearts of men

The drive to press, to strive for best, to rise

You've just arrived

The quest is driven through

Passion

~ _Passion_ , Blackalicious

**The Interview**

Since coming to the Kaiba estate, Alistair had seen Kaiba only a handful of times. Nonetheless, he could sense that Kaiba was now going out of his way to avoid him. Initially, this had left him feeling relieved and even rather smug: he alone had managed to rattle Seto Kaiba. But after a fortnight had elapsed, he grew restless. Especially at night. Try as he might to remind himself of all the loathsome aspects of Kaiba's character, his traitorous right hand always found its way under the waistband of his underwear.

For his part, Seto was more or less able to push the matter to the back of his mind. Stocks began to rise when the kick-off of the American Duel Monsters Nationals brought with it no rogue hologram sightings. Tickets to the finals had sold out within minutes, prompting PR to encourage Seto to put in an appearance, which he'd ultimately agreed to. There was nothing particularly appealing to him about watching Rebecca Hawkins trounce 'Bandit' Keith Howard, but at least it would give him an excuse to ignore the rest of the world for an hour or so.

The success of the American Nationals had conveniently happened concurrently with someone 'leaking' a teaser for Kaiba Corporation's upcoming VR adventure game, the graphics of which had left even non-duelists buzzing with excitement and given the major gaming journalists plenty to talk about. The hype had resulted in PR pressing Seto to give an interview on the Dueling Network. Seto had reluctantly agreed so long as he wasn't asked about the hologram monster scare. It turned out to be a naive misplay on his part.

At first, the interview had been relatively standard. Seto had been seated at a low coffee table on a plush couch alongside two of the Dueling Network's annoyingly perky hosts. After getting through the pleasantries and standard questions, the man had predictably asked about the VR teaser and if a release date had been set before transitioning smoothly to the American Nationals.

"Any favorites?" he'd asked, settling in comfortably, his eyes narrowed into a slight squint in demonstrative attentiveness.

Seto had given his analysis, which more or less mirrored official predictions that it would come down to Rebecca Hawkins and 'Bandit' Keith Howard in the finals, but that Rebecca would win.

Being asked his expert opinion, even regarding so droll a match-up, had lulled Seto into a false sense of security, so when the other host steered the interview suddenly towards the latest KC advertisement for Kaiba Air, he'd thought little of it. After all, until that point, she'd done little more than giggle at anything remotely funny either he or the other host had said.

"KC has really become the Domino brand in the last few years," she'd begun. "And after that iconic blimp during the Battle City semi-finals, we've all enjoyed the second-hand glory Kaiba Air provides. Is it just a coincidence the interior design is so similar?"

Seto had honestly never cared enough to pay attention given that he had little direct involvement with the airline, but he supposed it had been on purpose, and said as much. He was confused about why the girl had even bothered bringing it up until her follow-up question made it horrifyingly clear.

"Speaking of KC Air. She paused to flick a dark strand of hair behind her ear. "You and Mai Valentine sure looked cozy in the behind the scenes footage --anything the girls need to be worried about?"

Knowing she'd probably been waiting the entire interview to ask the question made Seto want to breathe fire and flip the coffee table, but though he managed to keep his anger inside, the desire must have shown in his eyes because he saw her conspiratorial smile falter. "No," he responded crisply. "We were very happy to have Miss Valentine team up with us, but her relationship to me was, I assure you, strictly business." It was extremely generous. In fact, Seto was fairly certain that off-set he and the Valentine woman hadn't exchanged so much as a glance, let alone stood close enough to justify the hostess' insinuation, which he knew meant she'd concocted the story as a flimsy alibi for delving into his personal life.

The conversation made him deeply regret having agreed to a cameo in the ad in the first place since the tone had indeed been rather suggestive. After a montage of Mai basking in the airline's first class benefits, she'd dropped her lipstick on the ground and stooped to pick it up only to realize after they'd reached for it at the same time, that the person sitting behind her was none other than Seto Kaiba. This had been followed by a close-up of their prolonged eye-contact before cutting to a scene in which Mai relaxed on the set of a Duel Disk ad. " _That's why I always fly Kaiba Air,"_  she told the camera as around her two young women curled her long blonde hair. " _You never know who you might run into."_

"Ah, ok," the hostess said without missing a beat, and forcing Seto to sharpen his vigilance when he saw the 'gotcha' gleam in her eye. "Are you seeing  _anyone_ currently?"

Even more annoyed than before, Seto was nonetheless forced to answer. God forbid he contribute to the rumor by declining to comment. With his fingernails digging so hard into his leg his knuckles had turned white, he spat out the word 'No,' with enough firmness to leave no doubts and a finality that dared dispute.

Luckily for everyone involved, the other host had had the tact to quickly change the subject. "Well, of course, with so much going on, you must be pretty busy these days. Speaking of which, can we expect to see you competing again any time soon?"

But nothing else mattered. For the next week, rumors that Seto Kaiba and Mai Valentine were sleeping together swirled around every major and countless minor tabloid news sites, and every existing image in which the two had existed in the same room was pulled apart. The only element of the situation that Seto found any pleasure in was imagining that if he listened hard enough, he could hear Joey Wheeler braying in jealousy.

"And there's no such thing as bad press, right?" Mokuba had managed to ask with a straight face.

The only person who didn't seem to have anything to say on the matter was Alistair. Given that he'd been avoiding him since 'the incident' Seto shouldn't have even noticed. But he'd expected Alistair to nevertheless find some way to dig into him about it. He was annoyed to find that Alistair's seeming indifference was far more insulting than anything he possibly could have said. Unable to deny that Alistair's refusal to goad him had caused 'the incident' to circle back around on the carousel of important things he shuffled through over the day, Seto chose to cease freezing him out and cornered him when Alistair was leaving Mokuba's game room.

"Do you have something to say to me?" Seto demanded after blocking Alistair's path by standing in the middle of the hallway.

Alistair, who'd been doing his best to follow Kaiba's lead by avoiding him, was startled to find himself so obviously sought out.

"No," he responded slowly, his eyes trained on Kaiba's slippered foot. "Why?"

"Don't play coy: I know you've been laughing at me. So go ahead." Here Seto paused to cross his arms. "Give me your best shot."

After working out what Kaiba was talking about, Alistair felt a pleasurable jolt of adrenaline in his stomach even though he knew he was reading too much into what was clearly nothing more than a particularly immature and paranoid incarnation of Kaiba's delusion that he was always at the forefront of everyone else's thoughts. "I really don't care," Alistair answered blandly. "Anyone with half a brain knows you aren't sleeping with her, but that you probably could be if you wanted to, so there isn't much to make fun of."

Against his will, Seto felt the corners of his mouth twitch downwards. "You really have nothing to say? Nothing at all?"

Alistair quirked an eyebrow inquisitively. "Do you  _want_ me to have something to say?" This time he was positive he wasn't just imagining the tension in the moments that followed.

The sudden realization of having backed himself into a corner left Seto little choice but to mutter "of course not," before turning on his heel and escaping back to his bedroom and quickly shutting the door.

The instant the latch clicked, Seto closed his eyes and cringed as the full effect of the flow of the conversation hit him. What had even been the point of that interaction? To provoke Alistair into teasing him? For what purpose? He chastised himself for being so uncharacteristically impulsive.

With his twentieth birthday only months away, Seto finally found himself forced to acknowledge what the press had said all along: he really was just a teenager after all.

* * *

As he blow-dried his hair and pulled on his clothes an hour later after his customary swim, Seto tried to kid himself into believing he was going to go to his home office, even going so far as to map out a mental schedule for a night's work. He kidded himself into being surprised when his feet led him past his office to the door of his step-father's room. Except he wasn't thinking about his step-father. For the first time, his reluctance to enter the room had nothing to do with Gozaburo at all.

  _I wanted to._  The thrill ran through him afresh.

He wasn't entirely sure what would happen when ( _when?_  When had he become so certain?) he opened the door, but he was almost ludicrously eager to find out. He needed to ascertain what Alistair was up to, and this was the easiest means of accessing that information.

* * *

 

It was going on midnight when Alistair heard the door creaking open. He didn't have to look up from his perch on the bed to know who it was. After what had happened earlier, a part of him had expected (and hoped for) as much. He'd resorted to using the desk lamp to read by, too lazy to get out of bed to turn the overhead light on. Nonetheless, Alistair could make out Kaiba's shadowy silhouette filling the door frame. Without taking his eyes off Kaiba, Alistair marked his page with one of his Duel Monsters cards, placed  _A Tale of Two Cities_  on the desk, and stood up. Behind him, Sewell flicked her tail indignantly for having been disturbed before padding to the other, more stable half of the bed.

Seto crossed the room so that he and Alistair were less than a foot apart. This was a bad idea, he knew,  _especially_  because it was Alistair. But Alistair was available. More to the point: Alistair was what he wanted.  _To gather information from_ , he reminded himself. And Seto had gone to far greater lengths than this in the past to get what he wanted, had he not?

Even now when he felt less sure of himself than he'd ever felt in his life, he refused to show any measure of hesitation. Hesitating was something a Kaiba simply did not do.

Silky hair against his face, warm breath on his cheek, Alistair's body against his. And then his mouth was on Alistair's mouth. His hands were on Alistair's back, Alistair's hands were in his hair. And they were twined so closely together Seto could feel Alistair's ribs against his chest.

Kissing wasn't anything like Alistair'd expected. It was sloppier. Harder. Of course he couldn't overlook the fact that it was the first time he'd truly kissed someone. Kaiba too as far as he knew--and he had reason to believe he did. But even though it was ostensibly nothing more than the crashing of lips and the exchanging of saliva while occasionally bumping teeth, it was the most pleasurable thing he'd ever experienced. The feeling of Kaiba's mouth against his and the pressure of his hands on his back were magnified to such a degree of intensity that Alistair wondered if his grip on Kaiba wasn't the only thing keeping him upright. He also wondered if Kaiba knew what he was doing.

Seto did  _not_  know what he was doing. Now that he was actually kissing Alistair, he realized the next steps were a complete mystery to him. Was he just supposed to stop now and leave? But somehow they'd fallen onto the bed while he'd been thinking and his mouth had found the hollow of Alistair's neck, and then his shoulder, and Alistair was panting, sighing, bucking against him, his fingernails digging into his shoulder blades.

_You know what I want from you_.

Seto jerked backwards as though Gozaburo were actually in the room. He realized he was breathing hard, noticed Alistair's brow-creased confusion--noticed too how appealing the redhead looked sprawled so charmingly beneath him, his vivid hair flayed across even redder sheets. 

_Don't forget you agreed to this._

This had been a bad idea. What difference did it make that Alistair was beautiful; he clearly just wanted to use him for his own gratification. And Seto had been going to let him! No matter that the rush of what they'd done had left him feeling more alive than he'd felt since Battle City, he wasn't going to give himself away so cheaply. Because it was all so cheap, wasn't it?

Nevertheless, it was with marked reluctance that he pulled away, avoiding Alistair's inquisitive eyes as he stood up. 

As he watched Kaiba leave, Alistair was left feeling perplexed and disappointed that they hadn't done more, and confused about why that might be. Not that he could really conceptualize what the 'more' would have been. Just that he wanted it and Kaiba wasn't giving it to him for whatever reason.

_He doesn't trust me_ , he reasoned, rolling over.  _Well fine, because I don't trust him either_.

But what, really, did trust have to do with it? Surely he was allowed to hate Kaiba and still want to be pinned beneath him. He rolled over again, one hand now resting on his inner thigh.

Surely.

* * *

 Seto stalked back to his room three doors over and paced back and forth across the plush carpet as he had several weeks before.

It was infuriating how much sway Gozaburo still had over him. It had been over six years since his step-father's death and still Seto couldn't escape, not when he was asleep, nor when he was awake apparently.  _This has nothing to do with him_ , Seto told himself firmly.  _Who cares what he'd think of me? He's dead. Really dead. No more computer programs to hide in--gone._ With great mental effort, he shoved his step-father aside.

The pristine plane of his bed loomed and he pivoted and paced back towards his closet. He couldn't ignore that a boundary had been crossed with no hopes of it ever being truly put back in place.  

What had he learned? He'd learned that Alistair's skin was surprisingly soft. He'd learned that Alistair fit rather well beneath him. And mostly interestingly, he'd learned that he himself was able to get a thrill out of something other than Duel Monsters.

What he hadn't been able to determine, was what Alistair was up to. He needed more information. Information best gained through more such encounters. His stomach flip-flopped at the thought. He supposed that as long as he didn't let things get out of hand, there was no harm in that.

* * *

And so a routine was grounded. Seto began coming home a half an hour earlier, going first to Alistair's room (which he was coming to associate with his step-father less and less), then swimming off the adrenaline and contemplating if he'd gleaned any insight into Alistair's plan, then going to bed.

Alistair had surprisingly little trouble adjusting to the new twist in the saga of his life. In some ways, he felt that fate had had a hand in it. It was beautifully circular. Kaiba had been the source of his angst and anger for so long, it couldn't possibly be a coincidence that it was Kaiba now smoothing his feathers.

There was only one thing about it that he found odd. Like a windup doll, Kaiba seemed to have an internal timer which caused his engagement in their encounters to gradually slow before ceasing completely. It was annoying and intriguing, and more than anything, Alistair wanted to know how to wind him back up again, but was maddeningly unable to find the key.


	8. The Aviation Exam

 "The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you'd ever left behind riding on your shoulders."

 ~Paolo Bacigalupi

**The Aviation Exam**

At the beginning of September, Alistair received word from Kaiba that the following afternoon he would fly for the instructor who would determine his competence. He hadn't flown in several months, so the prospect of being judged on his abilities made him nervous; he had a lot riding on doing well. He spent the entire day studying, but it only ended up making him more anxious.

"No, offence, Alistair, but you sound kind of crazy," Mokuba commented when he bumped in Alistair in the hallway. Too wired to sit in his room, Alistair had been roaming the hallways, mumbling commands, scenarios, controls, and their names over and over again with Sewell meowing at his heels.

"I'm just nervous," Alistair explained, running a hand through his already rumpled hair. "Sorry."

"No need to apologize," Mokuba replied quickly. "I just meant that you don't need to be so worried; I'm sure it'll be fine."

While they'd been talking, Sewell had taken the opportunity to wedge herself between Alistair's ankles, her paws tucked neatly beneath her. She watched on as one of the other humans tried to convince her human to go to bed. Her ear twitched at the word bed. She liked the bed.

"You're right," Alistair agreed even though he was convinced he'd end up half the night. "I'll see you tomorrow."

The moment he moved his foot, Sewell was up and on the move. She looked back at him and meowed impatiently before taking off down the hallway.

"Guess that settles that," Alistair said with a small smile. "Goodnight."

Up until he'd actually gotten to the room and stretched out on the bed to wait for Kaiba to get home, Alistair had felt wide awake. But something about the softness of the mattress caused his eyelids to droop.

_"Come on Mikey! It'll be fun! Don't you like flying?" he asked his brother, who was nervously clutching his Dino Dude action figure._

_Mikey shook his head, his overgrown bangs swinging violently back and forth. "I don't want to get on the plane; what if it crashes?"_

_Alistair smiled reassuringly and put a hand on his brother's shoulder. "It won't. I'm the pilot, remember? Don't you trust me?"_

_Mikey backed out of Alistair's grasp, his face uncharacteristically warped with anger and mistrust. "You told me the tank was safe and it wasn't. You're just a liar!"_

_"I'm not lying!" Alistair protested._

_"Admit it," Mikey demanded, pointing an accusatory finger at him. "You just didn't want me around anymore; you knew that without me holding you back, you could escape."_

_"That's not true! I was trying to save you!"_

_Mikey turned away. "I don't believe you. If you really cared about me, you wouldn't have gotten me killed. I hate you!" He took off running away from the plane._

_Somehow, Alistair knew that there was a landmine directly in Mikey's path._

_"Mikey, stop! Look out!"_

"Mikey!"

"Alistair, snap out of it!"

Alistair jarred awake, spurred into a sitting position by his pounding heart. He looked up at Kaiba. Even though it was dark, he imagined he saw concern in the slight furrowing of Kaiba's brow, imagined he saw the other man's arms twitch as though he was on the verge of reaching out to reassure him. It was enough.

With only a moment's hesitation, Alistair wrapped his arms around Kaiba's waist and leaned into his lower chest, his hands clutching the back of Kaiba's turtleneck. He knew he'd regret laying himself so bare, but that would come later.

If Alistair's face hadn't been pressed against his chest, he might have seen Seto's eyes widen in surprise. He knew what Alistair wanted, of course. There had been times, though not many, when Mokuba had come to him for comfort. And Seto had always tried his best to provide that service. He tentatively rested one hand on Alistair's back, careful to apply as little pressure as possible.

But this wasn't Mokuba. He couldn't be expected to actually  _hold_  him. That would be too… Personal? Intimate? Dangerous.

"Pull yourself together, Alistair. It was just a nightmare," he said gruffly, swiftly disentangling himself from the redhead. His tone seemed to bring Alistair to himself. He took several deep breaths and wiped a lone tear onto the back of his hand.

"Thank you."

The thanks plus the sad gray eyes looking up at him so pathetically caused an ache in Seto's chest that he hadn't felt for a very long time.

Without answering, he all but fled from the room, unnerved by his own reaction to such a simple gesture.

Alistair was too absorbed in his own emotions to care about Kaiba being rude. He knew now that what had happened to Mikey hadn't really been his fault--he'd always known, but he couldn't help but feed his own masochistic need to punish himself by looking for things he could have done differently that would have saved him. It was foolish, he knew, to continue the pattern all these years later. Knew it wasn't what Mikey would want for him. But still he continued, unsure how he would fill the chasm his self loathing had occupied all this time if he let it go.

* * *

Seto sat heavily on his bed. He shouldn't have looked into Alistair's eyes. But how could he have known? The despair, sorrow, vulnerability, and desperation in such an expression didn't usually move him. As an orphan himself he knew that as time went on and memories of family faded, the pain subsided, and as long as one didn't go searching for it, what little remained stayed locked away. Alistair, however, had never had the opportunity those children who lose their families early on have to heal. His survivor's guilt still seemed fresh, the interlude in which he'd worked for Dartz acting as a pause rather than a full stop. And now, because there was no more mission to save the world, however twisted it had been, he was clearly being forced to face it.

And that Seto could understand. If something were to ever happen to Mokuba, he'd never forgive himself. He could hardly forgive himself for the times when something had  _almost_  happened. And his deepest shame was that there had been times when he had failed, Mokuba's safety resting in Yugi's hands instead of his. He'd failed to defeat Pegasus, he'd failed to defeat Noah, and most recently, he'd failed to defeat Dartz. He grimaced briefly at the memories.

If he felt so ashamed and guilty over his failings, he could easily imagine the crippling despair that still haunted Alistair.

The realization that the slight ache in his chest was not caused by pity, but empathy, left Seto completely spooked. He resolved to make his observations from a distance for the time being.

* * *

Despite having a restless night, Alistair forced himself to put his internal turmoil on hold l so that when Alfred arrived the next morning to drive him to the aviation academy, he was able to focus.

Alistair could hear that they were approaching long before the building actually came into view. The engine roar grew louder and then they could see several small planes slicing through the morning air. Alistair couldn't help but feel smug when he saw one of them wobble slightly. If that was the standard, he had nothing to worry about.

The academy was an ugly modern building with far more edges than seemed necessary. A simple white sign stamped with the insignia of a generic blue plane stated that the building was home to the Domino Aviation Academy. It was so ordinary, Alistair had a hard time placing Kaiba there.

Alfred pulled around to the front door and Alistair couldn't help but look at him uncertainly. "Do I just...go in?" he asked.

"I believe so," Alfred replied with a small smile. "Just tell the receptionist you have an appointment with Henry Ogawa."

"Ok."

As Alistair was getting out of the car, Alfred rolled down the window. "Good luck," he said.

Once he'd entered the building, Alistair saw that the humble exterior was just a facade. An enormous lobby housed an original Mitsubishi Diamond jet that hung proudly from the ceiling. The receptionist's desk was a long slab of what looked like black granite behind which a plethora of awards and accolades hung on the wall.

His footsteps echoing off the marble floor, Alistair approached the desk where a woman with sleek dark hair sat at a computer, talking into a telephone.

"One moment," she said to whoever was on the line. "Can I help you?" she asked Alistair after giving him a subtle once‐over.

"I have an appointment with Henry Ogawa at ten."

"Name?" she asked as she typed in the information.

"Alistair."

She nodded. "He'll be out in a moment," she told him, though he hadn't seen her hit any buttons. "Please, have a seat while you wait."

Alistair had far too much energy to want to sit, but nonetheless felt obliged to force himself onto one of the lobby's two massive grey couches.

Just as his mind started to wander to his latest interaction with Kaiba, Alistair's stupor was interrupted by a door on the far side of the room opening with an echoing creak.

"Donna, we really need to get that oiled--it sounds like a haunted house in here," a jovial male voice boomed from the doorway.

Both Alistair and Donna looked up to see a short, portly man striding towards the reception desk, a grin as wide as his attache case forcing his cheeks into two cherubic blobs Alistair was surprised he could see over.

"And you must be the young man Mr. Kaiba's told me so much about," Henry Ogawa exclaimed without breaking stride so that Alistair was forced to stand up and veer sideways lest the man walk directly into the couch. Without waiting for more of a response than Alistair's nod of confirmation, Henry continued, steering them both back through the door he'd entered from. "Normally, of course, the Academy would never provide such a service, but when an old friend asks for a favor, you can hardly say no." He swerved suddenly to the left and almost caused Alistair to bump into him. "How is Mr. Kaiba? Busy as ever, I can only imagine." Alistair nodded again. "Well, of course, running a company that size...Still, he never missed a lesson when he studied here. Top of his class, of course. And so young!" This time, Alistair anticipated the abrupt change in direction when Henry swung sideways as though on a badly designed track and stepped out of the way before they turned the corner into another bare hallway lined with offices and what looked like a small library.

"I hope to get his brother some day soon. In fact: that's who I expected him to be calling about, but instead I end up with a friend of his--no offence to you, of course," he added over his shoulder, turning around before Alistair even had a chance to nod. Henry continued to babble, his feet and jaw working at breakneck speed until without warning, he stopped dead in front of the door at the end of the hall.

This time, Alistair did bump into him, his chest colliding painfully with Henry's fleshy shoulder.

"Sorry," he said, noticing how Henry's mouth finally closed only to form a disapproving line as though the collision had been the result of Alistair's clumsiness.

"Never mind," Henry answered snippily, ushering Alistair into what appeared to be his office.

The spacious room, like the lobby, comprised of one wall made entirely of glass, and the other packed with awards, certificates, and photographs of Henry standing beside some of his more famous protégés. While Henry went to sit at his desk, Alistair's eyes flitted across the photos, searching for Kaiba, whose picture he located smack in the middle of the wall. Henry sported the same grin he'd worn in the lobby, but of course Kaiba, then in his mid-teens, merely stared icily into the camera. Alistair could imagine that Kaiba's thoughts had been on how annoyed he was to have the flight instructor's pudgy arm around his shoulders.

"So," Henry said, his voice jarringly void of the good-humor that had characterized his manner up until that point. "What types of machines do you feel qualified to fly?"

After a forty minute oral exam during which Henry asked probing questions about his background in aviation that had made Alistair distinctly uncomfortable to answer, Henry brought him to the academy's eye specialist to test his vision. With the green-light from the doctor and Henry's initial qualms soothed, Alistair was brought back to Henry's office to sit the written exam which turned out to be a 3 hour long ordeal of multiple-choice questions about commands, and essay questions about emergency procedures.

Finally, it was time for the practical exam--the only part Alistair knew really mattered. As soon as Henry saw him behind the controls, there would be no question that he had more than earned his licenses. For he'd made it clear at the beginning of his oral exam that he wanted to be tested for a commercial license with a multi-engine rating so that he would be qualified to pilot essentially any kind of aircraft rather than just small, private jets. Henry had been quite surprised. Though the academy regularly awarded such licenses, the recipients were rarely under the age of thirty, and never as young as nineteen. That a teenager could possibly be qualified was ludicrous and he'd demanded a justification.

"I've been working with helicopters and jets since I was twelve," Alistair explained. "I know that sounds crazy," he went on when Henry seemed on the verge of interrupting. "But it was a skill I needed, you know, given the circumstances." As with the vague explanation of his relationship to Kaiba that he'd given Trudy, Alistair hoped the flight instructor would fill in the blanks.

Henry, despite appearances, was not a stupid man. It was plain that the young man was being purposefully evasive. The part of him that was an honorable man who cared about other people balked at the notion of signing the death certificates of anyone unlucky enough to find themselves on a flight with someone whose piloting experience had clearly been obtained during the revolution across the border.

His gaze flitted to his desk drawer where he'd stashed the signed check from Mr. Kaiba. On the other hand, what difference did it make where Alistair had gotten his experience from? If he was competent, he was competent.

And he most certainly was. There were no scenarios on the several simulators Henry tested him out on that he failed to manage appropriately and without a degree of finesse that far outstripped the flight instructor's low expectations.

Finally, it was time to actually fly in first a helicopter, then a small jet. A light drizzle had begun to fall while they boarded the helicopter. Henry made a note of the conditions on his evaluation form, and once they were both strapped in, he watched carefully as Alistair deftly started the engine and lifted the craft into the air.

As they rose into the gray sky, Alistair fancied he could actually feel his chest growing lighter. His own newfound buoyancy proved invaluable as he'd never flown better, elated as he was to be behind the controls of an aircraft again. There was nowhere in the world he felt more at home than in the air where there was no one but the weather to bother him, and rainclouds presented a challenge, not an annoyance.

It was with reluctance that Alistair returned to the ground after completing the final manoeuvre Henry set him.

"I'll be honest in saying that I had my reservations," Henry said once they were back in his office. "But you're a very fine pilot."

"Thank you," Alistair replied, unable to keep a brief smile off his face.

Henry held up a hand to beley the young man's excitement. "But here's my problem. You're incredibly young, and even though you've proven to me that in terms of talent and knowledge you're qualified for this license, it will be difficult for you to prove that to any future employer that you've put in the hours, and I don't feel comfortable risking my reputation and the reputation of this school. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to grant you a private licence, just for now, so that you can start officially logging flight hours, and then once you hit the 250 mark, I'll gladly upgrade you."

Alistair's stomach sank slightly, but he made a gallant attempt at keeping the smile on his face. Without a commercial license, he wouldn't be able to earn any money as a pilot which meant that he'd have to look elsewhere for a job because he had no means of logging flight hours outside of applying for commercial work. It was a colossal disappointment, but he held out a small hope that Kaiba might have a solution. And he hated himself for hoping it.

Nonetheless, after shaking hands with Henry and being told he would receive his licence in November, Alistair couldn't help but feel rather proud. Up until that moment he'd never had anything to show for his life, and now he had the approval of an expert flight instructor.

Upon arriving at the Kaiba estate, Mokuba all but jumped him at the door. "How did it go? Did you pass?"

Alistair found himself smiling broadly. "With flying colors. He said that I'm better than most of his own students at one point."

"That is so awesome!" Mokuba exclaimed, holding up a hand for a high five. Alistair uncertainly slapped his palm against that of the younger teen's. "We were pretty sure you'd be fine, so Trudy made a cake. Come on!"

Startled, Alistair followed Mokuba, not to the dining hall, but down some stairs to Trudy's cozy basement apartment where, unsurprisingly, a kettle was bubbling on the stove.

"Hey, Trudy, he passed!"

She looked up from setting plates on a simple small oak table."Oh! I'm not quite ready!" she said, looking at Mokuba reproachfully and tucking several strands of gray hair behind her ears. The raven-haired teen widened his eyes innocently. "I suppose it doesn't really matter," she relented. "Please, take a seat." Mokuba eagerly plopped down on one of the spindly chairs encircling the modest table, and Alistair followed suit. Trudy produced a two layered chocolate cake with a plane drawn in white icing from the top of the stove.

"Congratulations, Alistair!" she said warmly, presenting him with the dessert. "I'm very proud of you!"

"Oh, I…" Alistair didn't know how to respond. He hadn't had a cake made for him since he was a child, and even then only once just before the stores started rationing things like sugar. "Thank you, that was really thoughtful. I hope it wasn't too much trouble."

"Not at all. I hope you like chocolate."

Between the three of them they were able to eat half of the cake as Alistair gave them a run-down of how the test had gone, mindful that they might not know some of the terminology. After they were finished eating, Trudy told Alistair she'd put the other half of the cake in the upstairs refrigerator so that he could eat the rest at his leisure. He thanked her profusely, and insisted on helping with the dishes while Mokuba recapitulated, for the third or fourth time, how his second date with Hilary the previous Friday had gone, emphasizing that she'd told him how much fun she'd had and that she'd love to see him again. Trudy and Alistair listened patiently, exclaiming at all the right points as Mokuba continued to gloat.

"What does Seto think about you seeing girls?" Trudy asked while Mokuba paused for breath.

"He hasn't really said anything about it. I know he doesn't like it, but I don't really care; he's just jealous because I have something he doesn't."

Alistair smiled to himself. He found it incredibly funny that Mokuba truly believed he was in no way spoiled or bratty.

"Now Mokuba, there's no need to be like that," Trudy reprimanded him, handing Alistair a plate to dry. "Although," she added, "I can't help but hope that seeing you going on dates will help Seto see what he's missing out on. I'd love to see him open up to someone; Lord knows how lonely he must get. He's practically married to Kaibacorp, but that's hardly the same. And what about you, Alistair?You're no better: keeping yourself cooped up in this place all day; you'd do well to go out and meet people too."

"I mean, I'm not really lonely or anything."

"Still," she continued, handing him a second plate. "Cutting yourself off from society won't do you any good. It's easy to say that you'd rather be alone when you're young, but once you're thirty or so you'll look around and see everyone else with their families and realize what you could have had. The bottom line is: it wouldn't kill you to find a nice girl and go on a date."

Alistair was spared the necessity of responding when Mokuba stepped in on his behalf.

"But Alistair already has a nice girl, Trudy," Mokuba interjected. "He's got Sewell, doesn't he?"

Gratefully, Alistair nodded. "Yeah. Sewell and I have something pretty serious going. I wouldn't want to make her jealous."

Trudy sighed but could see that the conversation was closed.

* * *

Seto walked out of the boardroom in much higher spirits than he'd been in since before Dartz's takeover. He'd finally completed the design for the newest duel arena incarnation after working out the last bug in the holographic beamer, and was ready to send an order to Sapphire. Mentally, he was halfway to his office when his cell phone started to vibrate.

"What is it, Mokuba?" he asked, holding it up to his ear.

"Are you coming home for dinner?" his brother's suspiciously innocent voice inquired.

"I wasn't planning on it, why?"

"Well…I just texted Hillary to invite her to dinner and I--."

Seto stopped walking. "You  _what_? You can't just invite people to the house, you have to run that by me first!"

"I know, I know." Now Mokuba sounded annoyed. "But you would have said no."

"Of course!" Seto replied, quickly lowering his voice as several stragglers from the meeting who'd been hoping for one-on-one time walked passed him in disappointment. "We barely know this girl; we have no idea what she wants."

"You mean that  _you_  don't know her," Mokuba corrected him.

The purpose of his brother's initial inquiry suddenly became clear. "Oh I see, and you want me to come home for this dinner date of yours in order to change that?"

"She's just going to stay for dinner and then she's going to go home, I promise! I really want you to meet her. Please, Seto?"

Seto hated the desperation in Mokuba's voice because he'd always sworn to himself never to cause his brother to worry that their bond was anything but unshakable. Even though he wanted nothing to do with some floozy with whom Mokuba would likely soon lose interest, it was important to his brother now, so he acquiesced.

"Thank you!" Mokuba exclaimed, and Seto could imagine the excitement shining in his brother's eyes. It was enough to make being subjected to an evening of teenage prattle worth it. "You'll like her! I mean, it would be hard not to, she's pretty, and smart, and funny, and--."

"There is a condition," Seto interrupted him. "And I need you to listen very carefully." He paused paused to make sure he was alone before briefly ducking back into the conference room. "You have to tell Alistair that he can't be there."

"Huh, why?"

"How would that look?" Even though he was sure no one could hear their conversation, Seto was unwilling to spell it out.

Mokuba shrugged, then remembered his brother couldn't see him."I don't know."

"Where is he from?"

Suddenly, Mokuba understood. " _Oh_...But I mean, she wouldn't think--."

"Just humor me."

"Ok," Mokuba replied slowly. "But I really don't think she would think Alistair was your...I dunno, 'mistress' or whatever." The idea actually caused him to start laughing.

Seto felt his face grow hot and knew that he must be blushing. Grateful that there was no one else around to witness something so undignified and childish, Seto decided it was time to end the conversation.

"Never mind. I'll be back around seven, just remember to tell Alistair he needs to stay away so that I can focus on getting through this little soiree of yours."

"Please be nice, Seto."

"Yes, yes," Seto sighed. "For your sake, I'll behave. I know how important this is to you. Your first girlfriend and all of that. I'll see you tonight."

After getting off the phone, Seto continued to stare blankly at the wall for a moment. Mokuba really was growing up, it seemed, and there was clearly very little he could do about it. Amazingly, it seemed that his best option would be to follow Alistair's advice and play along rather than force Mokuba to choose between him and his budding independence.


	9. Puppy Love

  _Though the time will go on_

_And the seasons will change_

_I'll always think back on our kiss_

_~ First Kiss,_ Alexander Rybak

**Puppy Love**

Teenagers have selective memories at the best of times, and being a Kaiba didn't make Mokuba an exception. The moment he got off the phone with his brother he forgot to tell Alistair anything about Hillary coming to dinner

Instead, Mokuba spent all afternoon fretting about his date that night. Much as Alistair had the day before, Mokuba found himself roaming the halls and running over how he wanted the evening to go. Ideally, she and Seto would hit it off, and he dreamed up scenarios in which she managed to get his brother to smile. But he was worried. As much as he wanted to impress Seto with the amazing girl he'd somehow managed to land, he was afraid that after meeting his brother, Hillary would realize how much better she could do. Seto had always been the impressive one, the smart one, the talented one, and apparently, the handsome one too.

After his third lap around the house, Mokuba had the worst of all the bad thoughts he'd had that day: what if Seto was interested in Hillary? She was smack between their ages. She was gorgeous. She was witty. Could it be possible that now that Mokuba was so close to having something that was just his, Seto would take it from him?

Mokuba tapped his nails on the second floor banister. No, he decided, that would never happen. Seto would never dream of betraying him that way.

By the time six-thirty rolled around, Mokuba'd changed his shirt four times, finally settling on a black T-shirt with the Time Wizard on the front. At the last minute he also decided to pull his hair back in a ponytail and spray himself with his brother's cologne.

While waiting for Hillary by the main gate, Mokuba tried to lean nonchalantly against one of the white stone pillars while Saito watched on from afar. He managed to maintain his devil may care stance until he heard the sound of a car pulling off the main road, but it turned out to be Seto.

After he'd driven past Mokuba and parked the car, Seto told him he'd meet him inside and then swept into the house.

The next set of tires to crunch up the gravel path belonged to Hilary's white Prius. Through the windshield he could see that she was biting her lip nervously and he felt a small twinge of pride. He signaled Saito to let her in and the gate opened smoothly. Without taking her eyes off the path, Hillary pulled in before stopping and rolling down her window as the gates closed behind her.

"Where should I park?" she asked, looking around the grounds uncertainly.

"Don't worry about it, Saito will take care of it if you give him the keys." Mokuba gestured towards the bodyguard standing beside the now closed entranceway.

"Oh, ok…" She turned the car off and got out. "Thank you," she said to Saito, handing him the keys before turning to Mokuba. "I like your shirt," she commented, giving him a hug, the delicate scent of her shampoo wafting up into his nose. Behind them, Saito raised an eyebrow at the fluffy pink pom pom Hillary had attached to her kingring.

"Thanks. You look really nice too," Mokuba replied with what he hoped was a winning smile.

Away from the mall, Hillary had discarded her work polo in favor of a flouncy sundress and had worn her long blonde hair down so that it flowed over her bare back in a soft wave.

"What's for dinner?" Hillary asked as they walked towards the mansion, trying her best not to stare at the austere stone facade. She had told herself the entire drive there that she couldn't going to gawk at anything she saw that night if she wanted to have a prayer of being invited back. The last thing she wanted to do was come across as starstruck.

"I had our housekeeper make curry. You said it's your favorite, right?" Mokuba held his breath as he waited for her to answer, afraid that if he'd remembered wrong she'd think he didn't pay enough attention when they talked. 

She nodded, pleased that he'd remembered.

All of her friends had laughed when she said she had gone on a date with a fourteen year old, but had quickly changed their tune when she told them that the fourteen year old in question was Mokuba Kaiba. Then they had told her how lucky she was, and how jealous they were already of all the expensive things he was sure to buy her. And naturally, they had insisted that she repeat every detail of her date tonight, especially if she got to meet Seto, whom the majority of her friends found unfathomably dreamy. Hillary too had always found the older Kaiba extremely handsome, and even had a copy of his most recent ad in her locker, but she really did like Mokuba. And even though it had made her friends screech with laughter, she'd admitted that she thought Mokuba was almost as good looking as his brother.

"Is it just going to be the two of us?" she asked tentatively as she slipped her shoes off in the manor's expansive foyer.

"Oh, no. I hope you don't mind, but Seto was going to join us because I really want him to meet you." Suddenly Mokuba remembered that he hadn't told Alistair about Hillary coming over, or that he was supposed to keep a low profile. He said a silent prayer in the hopes that Alistair would stay conveniently out of the house until dinner was over.

When the two younger teens arrived, Seto was sitting at the dining table on his cell phone, instructing Roland on how to properly file the fax that had just come in. He looked up and gave the girl a brief once over, never pausing in his conversation. From his quick visual assessment he felt he had been able to determine that she was just some silly teenager who probably read fashion magazines and had sleepovers with her girlfriends. Still, etiquette dictated that he be polite even though she was hardly worth his time.

"Dinner will be ready shortly," he said in clipped tones after getting off the phone. "So go ahead and sit."

When she'd first met Mokuba at the food court, it hadn't struck Hillary as strange; Mokuba was just Mokuba. But it was distinctly surreal to be spoken to by Seto Kaiba. After seeing him on television for years and giggling over pictures of him with her friends, she could scarcely comprehend that the young man sitting at the head of the huge dining room table was real. He was just as handsome as on TV, his chestnut hair fashionably overgrown so that it fell across his eyes as he looked down at his phone. He wasn't wearing one of his iconic trench coats, but his simple white suit nonetheless left him looking sexy, powerful, and completely intimidating. Was she really expected to engage in conversation with him?

Mokuba pulled a chair out for her, unaware that his date was more than a little preoccupied.

Unbeknownst to either of them, Seto was furiously attempting to decide how to interact with the girl sitting at the table normally only occupied by himself, his brother, and recently, Alistair. He wanted nothing to do with her, but it was his responsibility to make her feel comfortable to please Mokuba. What did one talk to sixteen year old girls about?

"Mokuba told me that you work in food service," he began finally. "At the Domino mall, I believe?" He set his phone aside as he spoke and leaned forward, his hands clasped in front of him.

"Oh, uh, yes. I'm a cashier mostly," she replied without looking at him, choosing instead to fidget with a piece of hair that had fallen over her shoulder. "But I sometimes I make french fries and hamburgers too."

"Fascinating. And how long have you been in that line of work?"

"Not long," she explained, now twisting the strand of hair around her finger. "Just since the beginning of the summer. It's my first job."

Mokuba was spared the necessity of intervening in the painful conversation when Trudy arrived with four steaming plates of curry.

"You must be Hillary!" she said, setting the plates on the table and proceeding to divvy them out. "That's a lovely dress you've got on."

"Oh, thank you," Hillary answered, grateful to have the silence broken. "And the food smells really good."

"Polite  _and_  pretty," Trudy declared cheekily. "Whatever are you doing with this scrawny thing here?"

"Hey!" Mokuba exclaimed, though he knew the comment was meant affectionately.

"Where's Alistair?" Trudy asked, noticing all of a sudden that he wasn't there.

Seto looked up sharply, mentally kicking himself for not telling her that Alistair wouldn't be joining them. "He's not coming," he said curtly, hoping that would be the end of it.

"Why ever not? He's had such a long day what with taking that test and all; he passed you know, with flying colors I shouldn't wonder. Is he taking a nap?"

"He drove up to the mountains," Mokuba explained helpfully. "He wanted to get out of the house I think."

"I don't blame him. The poor thing hardly ever gets out except to read in the garden. I do hope that he'll take a leaf out of your book, Mokuba, and make a few friends instead of just doting on that little cat of his."

"Thank you Trudy, that will be all," Seto snapped, unable to feign indifference any longer. He'd noticed the girl's look of interest, and was unwilling to allow Trudy to continue fanning the flame.

"I'm so sorry." Trudy gave a little hop. "Look at me, prattling away. I'll just go get some drinks, shall I?" With that she bustled off, carrying the empty tray under her arm and the fourth plate of curry in her free hand.

Seto would have been perfectly fine with simply eating in silence, but the girl , it seemed, was determined to make the evening slightly more social.

"It's really nice to finally get to meet you," Hillary said with a warm smile as she daintily settled her napkin into her lap. "Mokuba talks about you all the time."

"Yes, well, he's been talking about you a lot as well." Seto hated how stilted he sounded when he was more than capable of charismatically commanding the attention of an entire arena. He would have greatly preferred that to the utterly alien nature of his present situation. But of course, there was no escape.

* * *

Alistair knew he'd be late even as he barreled up the narrow road that led to the Kaiba estate. There was no excuse-he'd had plenty of time to make the return journey, but everything had seemed to hold him up: he'd needed to get gas on the way back, he'd gotten stopped at every red light. Those weren't really the reasons he was running late, though. Once up in the mountains, he'd found it incredibly difficult to find the motivation to come back down. He enjoyed his conversations with Trudy and Mokuba over dinner, but it could all be so exhausting. While working for Dartz, there had been days when he hadn't spoken to anyone, sometimes several in a row. Granted, there had also been times when he and Raphael and Valon had been stuffed into small surveillance rooms together for weeks. It all left him unsure whether he liked being around people or not. The mixed emotions were what had really led him to dally. But once he was actually on the road, he discovered that he was rather looking forward to sitting down with who he oddly now considered his two closest friends.

After being let through the gates and parking his bike in the garage (where he wondered briefly whose car was blocking his usual spot), Alistair hurried into the house towards the dining room, expecting to be chastised by Trudy for his tardiness. Instead, he was startled to discover Kaiba sitting at the head of the table while Mokuba's girlfriend occupied his customary spot.

"Sorry I'm late," he said even as Kaiba's scowl informed him that he wasn't welcome. "I got held up." Despite recognizing that Kaiba didn't want him there, Alistair felt he had little choice but to join the table if he wanted to avoid making more of a spectacle of himself. "Curry, huh?" he added as he sat down next to Kaiba. "Smells great."

Seto couldn't decide who he was more annoyed with: Alistair for gatecrashing or himself for not seeing it coming. But now that Alistair was there, he could hardly send him away; that would undoubtedly make it worse. And judging by the look on the girl's face, it was bad enough already.

"How about something to drink?" Trudy had just returned to the dining room with a large pitcher of water and three glasses. "Oh, hello, Alistair, I didn't know you'd be back in time for dinner, I'll be right back with a plate. And next time do remember to wear a shirt with sleeves." The moment she left, awkward silence descended once more upon the room.

One of the attributes that even Dartz had praised Alistair for was his ability to think quickly on his feet. The skill had proven useful when he'd trained as a duelist as well as during the minor missions he, Valon, and Raphael had undertaken, and by the time Trudy returned with his dinner, Alistair found himself dusting it off.

"I'm Alistair," he said, casually introducing himself with a relaxed smile. "And don't worry about me getting in the way; I just came to grab a bite, then I'm off." He quickly devoured a mouthful of curry. "Oh, by the way," he added to Kaiba once he'd swallowed. "Henry says he'll only give me a private license until I hit 250 hours, so I guess you're stuck with me a little while longer." He turned to Hillary before Kaiba had a chance to interrupt him. "Kaiba and I are old aviation academy friends. He doesn't like people to know it, but he's really quite a generous guy; he's letting me stay here until I graduate, which isn't as easy for the rest of us as it was for Mr. 'Best at Everything' over there."

Seto wasn't sure what was more infuriating: the fact that Alistair was making him out to be some kind of good old boy who would allow random acquaintances to mooch off of him or the fact that it seemed to work. After Alistair's explanation, the curiosity drained from Hillary's face.

As the meal progressed, Alistair noticed that far from being his usual moody and bad-tempered self, Kaiba actually seemed ill at ease. Hillary being uncomfortable and averting Kaiba's gaze was understandable. Kaiba being seemingly unable to look into her face wasn't. He chalked it up to Kaiba being unused to dealing with laypeople. Still, he couldn't help but feel sorry for him given how pathetic that was. He'd never considered himself a sparkling conversationalist, but he'd lived with Valon long enough to know how to fake it.

He valiantly joined in Mokuba and Hillary's conversation about the progression of the American Duel Monsters Nationals and dragged Seto into it too by asking his opinion.

Having given his opinion on the subject twice already, and knowing that Alistair knew that too, Seto hated the grain of gratitude he felt towards him for seamlessly including him in a discussion he was actually equipped to undertake. Still, despite Alistair's best efforts, Seto found it merciful when Hillary thanked the Kaibas for their hospitality, but indicated she ought to head home after Trudy came to collect what was left of the chocolate mousse that had served as dessert. The second the two younger teens were out of sight, Seto caught Alistair's eye, nodded slightly, and the two slipped upstairs to Alistair's room.

* * *

"That was really nice," Hillary said to Mokuba as they put their shoes back on in the foyer. "The food was amazing!"

"Yeah, Trudy's a really good cook; I'm lucky that I'm still so skinny," Mokuba agreed, though he didn't much care to discuss dinner when there was the potential for a kiss instead.

"Your brother's friend was really nice too. It's cool that you guys are letting him stay here."

The invisible question mark was nonetheless palpable, and Mokuba did his best to sidestep it. "Well, like he said: he and Seto go way back, so when Alistair needed somewhere to crash, there was no question about him staying with us. That's just the way Seto is."

Hearing the admiration in Mokuba's tone, Hillary couldn't help but smile. On the occasions that she and Mokuba had hung out, he never failed to talk up his brother.

"You really look up to him him, don't you?" she noted.

Mokuba grinned sheepishly. "Yeah. I know it's kind of pathetic since he's my brother, but I do."

"I don't think so," she disagreed, and when he looked up, Mokuba noticed how the light from the setting sun made the gold in her hair shine. "I actually…" She paused as she felt herself flushing. "I really like you, and unless I'm completely delusional, I think you like me too, so I was wondering if, maybe, you'd want to make this an official thing." She looked hopefully up at Mokuba from under her eyelashes.

"Yeah, I'd really like that," he replied, barely able to contain his excitement, but managing to keep his voice serious. When they kissed, he could taste the strawberry flavor of her lip-balm. It was wonderful.

After they broke apart, they both grinned giddily for a moment before Mokuba led her around the front of the house to the garage, his hand twined around Hillary's.

"I'll text you when I get home," she promised once she was behind the wheel of the car and halfway down the driveway.

"Sounds good!" he replied, waving as she pulled out onto the street.

Still punch-drunk off of his first kiss and having Hillary ask him out, Mokuba failed to question where his brother and Alistair had gone.

* * *

During their silent walk to his bedroom, Alistair pondered his recent feelings of sympathy for Kaiba, surprised to find that it didn't bother him nearly as much as it should have to have humanized his arch nemesis. But he supposed Kaiba wasn't really his arch nemesis anymore, if he ever really had been. So what was he to him? Not a friend certainly. But they were far too intimately involved to be acquaintances.

Kaiba trailed his hand lazily along the banister with a trained elegance such that Alistair couldn't help but admire how beautiful his hands were, each long, pale finger perfectly manicured. For all his character flaws and his horribly cliched tragic backstory, Kaiba was a more alluring specimen of humanity than anyone deserved to be, and Alistair had to admit that there was a possibility his knee-jerk feelings of dislike towards Kaiba stemmed from jealousy. Why should one person be allowed to have everything desirable in the world all the way down to tapered fingertips?

By the time they reached his bedroom, Alistair had managed to annoy himself by noticing several other minute instances of Kaiba's physical perfection. He was so lost in thought that he scarcely noticed that they'd stopped walking until Kaiba reached around him to close the door, the action causing an anticipatory jolt of pleasure in his lower stomach.

"What the hell were you thinking coming to dinner when I specifically told you not to?" Kaiba demanded unexpectedly.

Alistair, who had been expecting something quite different, was completely bewildered."What? What are you talking about?"

Taking in Alistair's apparently genuine confusion, Seto realized what had happened. "Mokuba didn't tell you, did he?"

"No," Alistair shook his head. "But it's ok; I think she believed me. And I have to give credit where credit is due: it was really nice of you to put up with that for him."

The warmth that Seto felt at Alistair's words immediately put him on the offensive. "Yes, about that." Seto crossed his arms and glared directly into Alistair's eyes. "Let me be perfectly clear. We aren't friends. That isn't what's going on here. I'm fulfilling my promise to you by letting you stay here. Everything else is just an extension of that promise. Are we clear?"

Alistair snickered. "I see. Well, you certainly don't cut corners."

"Think whatever you like," Seto snapped, annoyed now that they were standing close enough that Alistair could surely see him blushing. "You're nothing to me other than an occasional form of entertainment."

"Why don't you allow me to entertain you then," Alistair replied with a dangerous smile, sidling up to him so that they were standing chest to chest, his hands snaking under the the shoulders of Seto's suit jacket.

"No," Seto said stonily and with a herculean level of self control.

"Why not?" Alistair pressed, even as he took an obliging step backwards.

Despite instantly missing the warmth of Alistair's body and the promise of what was supposed to have happened, Seto found himself nonetheless saying: "because I'm not your personal sex doll. If you want to fuck something so badly, go to a club."

"You're not serious."

Unclear why he felt so certain that he needed to draw a line after weeks of shameless rendezvousing, Seto answered in the affirmative, his gaze now resting on the door to Alistair's left.

"Why bring me here just to tell me  _that_?" Alistair asked with genuine curiosity. "You could have said all this in the dining room."

Seto didn't appreciate Alistair probing into his motivations when he himself was so unsure what they were. "We aren't doing this again," he said firmly.

"What? Why?"

As Alistair took a startled step forwards, Seto took a step back as though they were partners in an extremely sloppy waltz.

"What right do you think you have to ask me that?"

"Well," Alistair replied with a slight grin. "As one of the participants I just sort of assumed that I--."

"See, that's exactly what I'm talking about," Seto interjected, taking another step back and preparing to walk around Alistair to get to the door. "You don't get to assume anything. You don't know me, and I don't want you to know me. And I definitely have no interest in knowing you, so why don't you do us both a favor and go back to staying out of my way!"

"What, until you're bored again?" Alistair demanded, his confusion giving way to anger. "Because if you don't take that back then we really aren't going to be doing whatever the hell it was we were doing again. And fuck you for acting like I've been following you around like some pathetic, horny fangirl when as I recall,  _you're_  the one who comes up to  _my_  room at night but then doesn't have the guts to follow through."

"I have my reasons," Seto replied through gritted teeth.

"Good for you," Alistair retorted hotly. "And congratulations; I no longer care what they are."

"Good."

They glowered at each other until Sewell emerged from under the bed and rubbed herself against Alistair's legs.

"And keep that cat out of the rest of the house," Seto snapped, moving at last to the door. "It's been getting its fur everywhere."

"As though you're the one cleaning it up," Alistair countered to Kaiba's retreating back, but all he got in reply was the sound of the door closing. "God, I can't stand him," he muttered to Sewell when she looked up at him. She meowed in seeming agreement and he picked her up, petting her head absently as he continued to silently seethe about how loathsome Kaiba was.


	10. Twist

 "Be my bad boy, be my man, be my weekend lover, but don't be my friend."

 ~  _Bad Boy_ , Cascada

**Twist**

From the moment he told Alistair to stay away, Seto regretted it. It had been humiliating to have Alistair acknowledge out loud that he couldn't do more than kiss him, but even though that was all it had been, Seto found himself missing it. The day after their argument he'd come home from work and gotten almost all the way upstairs before he remembered the ban he'd placed upon what had become a routine part of his day. Grimacing in annoyance, he'd gone to the pool instead, each successive lap a punishment for his pigheadedness. After finally exhausting himself, he'd dragged himself to the shower where he was irritated to find that he was still thinking about Alistair.

Seto sighed and tapped his fingers against the tiled shower wall. As little as he wanted Alistair anywhere near him emotionally, cutting himself off from him physically hadn't been one of his better decisions.

* * *

Alistair allowed himself to stew for three days over having been so abruptly tossed aside. He knew he should have expected as much from someone so volatile and was incredibly frustrated by the sense of betrayal he nonetheless felt.

To combat this, on the morning of the fourth day, he decided to take Kaiba's advice and seek out the release he was craving elsewhere. It wasn't like it had to be Kaiba. Anyone would do; his attraction to Kaiba was case in point.

While breakfasting with Mokuba, he mentioned that he was interested in going out for the day. Even several months into his stay with the Kaibas, Alistair couldn't help but feel rather foolish having to ask a kid for, for all intents and purposes, an allowance. But as always, Mokuba didn't bat an eye as he pulled out his wallet.

"Sure thing. How much do you need?" Sensing Alistair's uncertainty, Mokuba offered a solution that he realized he ought to have thought of weeks ago. "Hey actually, it doesn't matter. You can use my debit card. I never need it anyway. Here." He placed the blue plastic card on the table. "The pin is 0725. Just don't tell Seto; I'm probably not supposed to give you this. But it's ok!" he added when Alistair started to protest. "I trust you, so it's really no problem."

Alistair hesitated. It certainly would be nice not to have to ask for money every time he went out, but taking Mokuba's debit card against Kaiba's will seemed unnecessarily risky."Are you sure?"

Mokuba slid the card across the table. "Seto won't even know. If anything, our accountant would ask me about it since it's my card, but I doubt he will. And you really shouldn't be so scared of Seto."

"I'm not scared of him," Alistair balked, his revulsion at the notion that Mokuba could even think such a thing propelling him to pick the card up and shove it in the pocket of his jeans. "I'd just rather not get kicked out before I get my license."

"No one's going to kick you out," Mokuba said, unpleasantly surprised that Alistair still thought them so callous. "You're Seto's guest and I mean, I know you're older than me, but I kind of thought of you as my friend."

Alistair started at the word 'friend' and looked more closely at Mokuba, who, given his preoccupation with Kaiba, he'd neglected to really think about. He thought back on the dust coating the majority of Mokuba's multi-player games and how happy the younger teen always seemed when he agreed to play them with him. He'd surmised then that Mokuba was probably lonely, but it hadn't occurred to him until that moment that Mokuba's true motivation in convincing his brother to take him in in the first place had been so that he could finally have a friend.

It was so pathetically sad that the only friend the kid had was someone who'd tried to kill him, it made Alistair's heart ache.

"Yeah, of course we're friends," he responded seriously, and was pleased to see Mokuba perk up considerably. "You're right, I'm just being stupid. Thank you for the card; I promise I won't abuse it."

Mokuba relaxed back into his chair and started attacking his pancakes again. "Don't worry about it. And hey, what are you going to do in the city?"

"Just walk around," he lied, his eyes on his own half-eaten breakfast. "I kind of want to go to the library and then I might grab dinner downtown." Luckily, Mokuba, once again absorbed with his food, didn't notice.

* * *

Alistair spent the remainder of the morning in his room, the passage of time marked by how many of his clothes were strewn across the couch and bed. If so much of his concentration weren't being exerted on piecing together a clothing combination suitable for the day's chosen activity, he might have taken a moment to scoff at the number of things he'd acquired over the summer.

As the noonday sun splashed through his windows, providing a plethora of places for Sewell to stretch out, Alistair finally settled on a simple black tank top with dark jeans. He was annoyed that after spending two hours on the project it was the best he could come up with, but everything else he owned had seemed too loose for what he was aiming for.

Glancing at the clock that at some point had had new batteries installed, Alistair realized it was nearly lunchtime and quickly rooted around for a hoody lest he violate Trudy's dress code by showing up to the meal without sleeves.

Over a lunch of roast beef sandwiches and salad, Alistair broke the news to Trudy that he wouldn't be home for dinner. Normally Trudy would have been affronted that one of her boys would ever dare choose to eat someone else's food, but she was rather pleased that Alistair was at last taking an interest in the world outside the estate, and so took it in stride.

After lunch, Alistair retrieved his trench coat from his room and headed out into the warm, late summer afternoon. As he was adjusting his helmet and checking the gauges on his motorcycle, he winced at the prominent scratch it still bore down the side--a scar leftover from his and Mokuba's accident. But now that he had more ready access to money, perhaps he could finally have it fixed, Mokuba's debit card opening an entirely new realm of possibilities. He could order food anywhere he chose without even looking at the price if he wanted to, he could spend an afternoon at the arcade, he could buy himself new books to read--the sky was the limit. But before anything else, he decided to finally get himself a phone charger and cell phone plan. It wasn't that he had anyone to talk to (yet), but a cell phone would hopefully reconnect him to a world beyond just Kaiba. Most importantly, he could start looking for opportunities to earn money of his own because while the card tucked into his otherwise empty wallet would do for now, the golden goose was bound to dry up sometime.

Alistair hadn't been into town for a few weeks, and he was surprised by the odd sense of relief he felt at being surrounded by the honking of cars and the general hubbub of humanity. Alone on his motorcycle, he was able to be a part of the crowd and watch the goings on without really having to involve himself, which suited him just fine. As the traffic inched forward, he observed a group of teenagers with duel disks marching along the sidewalk with what he was sure was supposed to be swagger but in fact just made them look like children parading around proudly in their mother's' high heels. He grinned at the image before shifting his focus to the other side of the street where a roadside billboard advertised advance season passes to Kaiba Land, which was scheduled to open the spring of the next year. The billboard was incredibly try-hard, in Alistair's opinion, the entire sign held in the clutches of what else but a pop-up Blue Eyes White Dragon.

The traffic finally started to clear and he rode on, now preoccupied with finding somewhere to park.

An unplanned city, downtown Domino was a labyrinth of dead ends and winding side-streets where every available inch of space was dedicated to either a storefront or front stoop such that the tantalizing smells of cooking food intermingled grotesquely with the stench of rotting garbage.

He emerged onto a main thoroughfare dominated by a startlingly yellow building that sloped sharply upward so that from the street it seemed to form the peak of a pyramid. That the building predated the arrival of the Millennium Items in Domino didn't make the coincidence any less amusing. A polished steel sign outside the main entrance alerted visitors that they were about to enter the Domino Public Library and the first stop on Alistair's list.

After parking in the back lot, Alistair followed a small throng of patrons into the library's front lobby and tentatively approached the front desk. The late-middle aged woman seated there looked exactly as Alistir would have imagined a librarian to look all the way down to her thick glasses.

"Hi," he began uncertainly. "I was, uh, hoping to get a library card, but I'm not sure exactly how that works."

The peeved expression vanished from the woman's face at the mention of a library card. She could see plainly that the young man was from across the border and would have assumed he would be unable to read, let alone seek out a library card, but she was pleased to be proven wrong.

"Yes, of course. Well, it's quite simple actually. Just go over to that machine just past the checkout counters there, you see? And you type in your information and then come back to me and I'll print you a card."

"And how much is it?"

"Why, nothing," she replied, seemingly taken aback. "The only thing that costs you money here is not bringing our materials back on time. Well, and a few of the new releases, but those are pretty clearly marked."

"Oh." Alistair was embarrassed not to have known and quickly made his way to the computer she'd indicated and pulled up the 'new patron' menu to begin the library card form. He immediately saw that the keyboard didn't have all the characters he'd need for his last name and rather than attempt to spell it out phonetically, he abandoned it altogether and used Trudy's instead, distancing himself from his past out of habit. Filling in Kaiba's address gave him little pause since he highly doubted anyone would care enough to look it up. And even if they did, it was possible that the occupancy was unlisted.

"Alistair. Now that's a name you don't hear every day," the librarian exclaimed when he'd returned to her desk. "Alright, Alistair, if I could just see some ID." But she'd said it more out of obligation than the expectation that he actually had anything to show. Predictably, he bit his lip. Sparing him the need of coming up with a justification, she added. "Never mind, it's alright. I'll let you get away with just a phone number." Something about his abashedness made her believe he really just wanted to use the library, not steal anything.

"Thank you so much," he mumbled, and quietly rattled off his cell phone number. "After this I'm going to get a charger, so it should work then," he promised.

"That's fine," she replied reassuringly as behind her the card printer whirred into life.

After having the warm card placed in his hands, Alistair thanked the woman again and wandered further into the depths of the library.

The library's interior comprised of two main levels and a third floor used to file old newspapers, magazines, and microfilm dating back almost to the turn of the last century, as well as the library's more valuable and rare books. Alistair meandered through the nonfiction section on the first floor, breathing in the familiar smell of old paper emanating from rows upon rows of books. Even though the building itself had a distinctly 1960s feel with bold colors and polypropylene furniture, once a person was amongst the books, that feeling melted away. Brand new biographies on people like Maximillion Pegasus and dusty tomes outlining the achievements of forgotten Greek generals shared the shelves in a colorful hodgepodge that Alistair liked immediately.

Beyond the ocean of books was an almost anachronistically up-to-date computer lab where students sweated over their first essays of the semester and old men struggled to check their email, aided by patient library employees. Alistair looked around and located an available consol sitting at a conveniently private angle facing the back wall. He took a seat, punched in the login information on his library card and let his fingers hover over the keyboard as he tried to decide how to word his search.

The moment the results popped up on screen he glanced furtively around to make sure no one was about to walk behind him before selecting a promising article in a local magazine,  _Out Loud_ , titled: "A Night Out in Domino" wherein the word 'out' was shaded in with rainbow colors. The author sang the praises of a nightclub called 'Byzantium', but the word "exclusive" spurred Alistair to skim further into the article. A retro-style bar named 'Twist' seemed much more promising.  A quick follow-up search revealed that it wasn't far from the library and located relatively near a parking structure. It would do.

Alistair spent the next several hours happily perusing the library and mentally bookmarking materials he wanted to come back for and only noticed the time when his stomach growled loudly.

With some reluctance despite his hunger, he backtracked through the library to the main lobby and smiled briefly at the librarian before walking out the front doors and into the parking lot.

* * *

A few laps of the city center later (including a quick stop at an ATM and then a nearby hotdog stand where he swiftly devoured two hotdogs) Alistair entered a cramped phone store. He'd passed by several Kaiba Corp owned electronics stores, but ignored them. Paying for Kaiba's products with his own money was just too much. The man seated behind a counter jam-packed with cellphone accessories curled his lip back momentarily in a look of obvious disdain when he saw who'd walked into the store, but Alistair's attention was on the Kaiba Corporation insignia stamped on a display of Duel Disk cleaning supplies, which he was giving a similar expression.

"I need to get a new charger for this phone," Alistair explained when the man failed to acknowledge him, his eyes moving to the sales associate at last. He fished his phone out of his pocket and  placed it on the counter. "And a phone plan too. Something unlimited. And I want to keep the same number if I can."

The man examined the phone before nodding and retrieving the corresponding charger from the wall behind him. After setting it back on the counter he rattled off the plans the store had available in an impressively emotionless tone. Alistair was perplexed by the man's thinly veiled hostility, and only his recently filled stomach allowed him to keep his temper when replying, but in the end he left with what he wanted. With his new charger stored in the compartment under his seat, it was finally time to locate the bar he'd read about.

It wasn't hard to find. After parking his bike in the nearby parking structure, he barely had to turn back out onto the street before he saw the brightly colored sign for 'Twist', made even more obvious by the large rainbow flag stretched proudly across the front window.

He hesitated momentarily before entering and was immediately hit by the blaring of a heavily remixed pop song. 'Twist' was laid out like an old fashioned diner with squashy plastic booths in a violent shade of red and a slightly dingy black and white checkered floor. Framed posters of Madonna, Britney Spears, and other, more recent pop icons fought for space on the walls so that Alistair wasn't sure where to hold his gaze.

"Are you just gonna stand there all evening, sugar, or are you gonna come in and order something?" Alistair blinked, and realized that the drag queen bartender was addressing him.

"Oh…I…Yes. Sorry." Slightly flustered, he let the door swing shut behind him and took a seat at the counter after awkwardly pulling off his jacket and folding it onto his lap.

"What's your name? I haven't seen you around here before," the bartender asked, looking him over, her bleached teeth furiously working a piece of blue bubble gum.

"Alistair," he mumbled, trying to avoid staring into her ample cleavage.

"Alistair," she repeated his name back at him around her gum. "I bet you get guys swooning all over you with a name like that." She ignored his weak denials. "Well, Alistair, you can call me call me Crystal. At least until I get off work." She batted her long black eyelashes so that they feathered against her cheekbones.

"Ah, leave him alone, Crystal. I know you're desperate, but you can at least have the class not to spread your legs for every twink that walks in here."

"I don't know who you're calling desperate," Crystal snapped at the man who had called her out. Alistair turned in the direction the voice had come from and found himself locking eyes with the young man who had spoken. His black hair was spiked to perfection and his slightly stubbly face and a worn leather jacket gave him a 'devil-may-care' appearance that made Alistair think he may have already found what he'd been looking for.

"Don't mind Crystal," the young man told Alistair with a dismissive wave of his hand. "She's harmless. I'm Darren by the way. It's nice to meet you, Alistair was it?" Without breaking eye contact, he took the seat beside Alistair and casually propped himself up on his elbow.

From behind the counter Crystal snorted derisively and patted her tottering blonde updo. "Now who's the one spreading their legs?"

Alistair knew he was supposed to say something witty, but his mind drew a complete blank. Over the years he'd had to endure Valon going out and returning several hours later with some giggly girl in tow, but it had never occurred to him to ask how he did it. Luckily he was spared the necessity by Darren's forward approach to the situation.

"Hey, Crystal, once you've gotten the dildo out of your ass, could you possibly be bothered to get us some beers?"

Crystal rolled her eyes and flipped him off before flouncing around to retrieve two glasses which she proceeded to set down in front of them harder than was necessary so that some of Darren's beer sloshed over the top. He didn't seem to notice.

"So, Alistair, are you here alone?" Darren asked directly as he took a sip of his drink, his dark eyes never leaving Alistair's face.

"Yeah," Alistair replied in what he hoped was a careless tone, though he ruined the effect slightly when he went to take a gulp of beer and very nearly spat it back onto the table.

Darren chuckled. "Twist isn't known for having the highest quality beer."

"What  _is_  it known for?" Alistair asked once he'd stopped coughing.

"Good food and hot guys," Darren explained, taking another sip of beer. "And it never disappoints." With a motion more smooth than Alistair would have expected, Darren placed a hand on his thigh, just underneath his jacket.

 Alistair wondered what Kaiba'd have to say about the fact that it had taken less than ten minutes for him to get picked up. He withdrew from his internal gloating when he realized Darren was still talking.

"I know it's early and you just got here, but once we finish these, what do you say we head out? I don't live far from here, and I promise that I can get you a better drink if you like."

With great effort, Alistair forced himself to finish the remainder of the beer in his glass. He learned that Darren was in his third year of art school at Domino University and that he was a photographer for the university newspaper. But when Darren inquired into  _his_  background, Alistair merely said that he had recently relocated from San Francisco.

"America?" Darren sounded surprised.

"Yeah, I worked there for a while," Alistair explained dismissively and Darren had the tact not to press him further. 

Outside, the street had come to life, the sidewalk jam-packed with groups of young adults noisily chatting about which of the many bars and cafes lining the street to enter, about the latest gossip within their friend circles, and complaining about those blocking the way to take selfies. Darren navigated easily through the crowd, occasionally greeting friends and acquaintances, and Alistair did his best to keep up. Finally, they broke through onto an empty corner away from the weekend fanfare.

"Not too far now," Darren said, briefly resting an arm around Alistair's shoulders.

They entered what passed for a neighborhood, cramped with hastily constructed highrises to house a steadily growing student population. Littered here and there were convenience stores and the occasional pizzeria. It was quieter here, though the odd whoop of laughter or burst of music signified that the area was hardly deserted.

"Here we are." They stopped in front of a seemingly random building, and while Darren fumbled for his keys, Alistair felt the stirrings of uncertainty. Did he really intend to go through with this, something he'd scorned Valon for for years? Something that Kaiba had encouraged with such derision? This time last year he'd been one of the most trusted warriors of the last king of Atlantis, poised to trigger the dawn of a new world, and now here he was, about to be bedded by a stranger. Was this really supposed to be a better life than what he'd had before?

But despite his misgivings, once Darren had buzzed into the building, Alistair dutifully followed him through a small lobby to an elevator.

The moment he'd hit the twelfth story button, Darren turned to Alistair, pressed him against the corner of the elevator car, and leaned in to kiss him. It was so sudden and unexpected that instead of participating, Alistair froze.

"What's the matter?" Darren asked with decency enough to sound concerned rather than annoyed at finding his night's conquest less than eager to get started.

"Sorry," Alistair apologized, a slight flush appearing on his face. "I just wasn't expecting that."

There was a pause during which Alistair noticed the unpleasant bumping of the elevator against something in the shaft and prayed that they wouldn't get stuck between floors.

"You have done this before, haven't you?"

Suddenly, Alistair changed his mind; being trapped in the elevator would have provided a timely distraction.

"Not exactly," he admitted as they reached their destination, the doors of the elevator dinging cheerfully as they slid open.

"Really?" Darren's tone held more than a hint of skepticism that left Alistair feeling more embarrassed than he felt it ought have.

"I mean," he clarified, hastily following Darren out of the elevator. "I've been with a guy before if that's what you want to know." It was a stretch. The fact that he couldn't even bring himself to admit that all he'd done was aggressively make out with Kaiba a few times made him realize how truly childish it had been.

"Only one?" Still the skepticism lingered.

Angrier than ever with Kaiba for having forced him to resort to this after leaving him so ill-prepared, Alistair found that his nerves were gone.

"What difference does it make? Are we going to do this or not?"

"Yeah, for sure." Darren's grin was back. "Let's go. Oh, and my roommate might be home, but don't worry about it; she won't bother us."

Darren's apartment turned out to be nicer than Alistair had expected. An L shaped couch snaking around one wall faced a large television and harbored a coffee table piled high with textbooks, papers, and stacked plates. Canvases of various sizes were lined up along the walls. Those that Alistair could see featured complex shapes loaded with swirling colors.

"Britney, my roommate's work, not mine," Darren explained when he saw where Alistair was looking. "I was never really interested in traditional art--I specialize in graphic design."

"Oh."

"Darren, is that you?" a girl's voice called from a different room.

"Yeah," Darren called back. "And I've got company so don't walk out in your underwear."

She emerged from the back of the apartment a moment later, one hand smoothing down a sleek ponytail.

"Oh,  _that_  kind of company," she said when she saw Alistair. "Don't worry, I'm on my way out." When she thought Alistair wasn't looking, she shot Darren a thumbs up and mouthed 'nice.' "Have fun, guys!" she told them with a wink before skirting around them to retrieve her keys from a hook beside the door and traipsing into the hallway, the heels of her shoes clicking audibly even after the door had closed.

"Sorry about that," Darren apologized. "Anyway, my room's just here."

Compared to the spaciousness of the living room, the bedroom was incredibly cramped. An enormous white desk had been squashed into the corner and along the front wall, but even this was dominated by a powerful computer. Though hardly an expert, Alistair could tell that it was a piece of machinery meant to be able to take a beating and must have been expensive. The rest of the desk was covered in printouts, presumably from Darren's school projects, as well as an array of pens, markers, and styluses. A pride flag had been hung in the window, and a Domino U banner was strung across the wall above the bed, but apart from that, the room was empty of decoration, though a large pile of laundry next to the desk added a pop of color.

Alistair started as Darren came up behind him, his hands slipping down his thighs and his chin resting on his shoulder. "You're really hot, you know," Darren told him, his breath warm on Alistair's neck. It was a cue that was difficult to misinterpret, and Alistair found himself turning in Darren's grasp and boldly pulling him into a kiss.

It was strange kissing someone that wasn't Kaiba. Darren's face was rougher against his cheek, and his technique was much more exploratory. Alistair soon found himself relieved of first his jacket and then his shirt. Then they were on the bed and Darren was on top of him, his mouth sliding along his throat. And Alistair couldn't help bucking against him, a soft ' _unn'_  escaping his lips.

It was exactly what he'd wanted of Kaiba. Oh, if only Kaiba could see him now! He'd be...what? Jealous? Surely not. He redoubled his focus on pulling Darren's shirt up, and felt completely at ease until Darren went to unbutton his pants. It was then that Alistair realized that it was really about to happen: he was going to have sex with this person and all that that entailed. The feelings of uncertainty returned.

"You ok?" Darren asked huskily when he felt his partner tense beneath him.

"I...I've just never done this before," Alistair admitted, avoiding Darren's eyes.

"Ever?" This time there was no skepticism, only surprise.

"I mean, I've kissed someone before," he added, heat rising in his face. "But…"

"Then are you sure you want to do this?" Darren pressed, sounding unsure himself.

"Yeah!" Alistair replied quickly. "I just…" He wasn't sure what he was trying to say. He couldn't say that he was scared. It would be ridiculous to be scared, especially when he'd experienced real danger before and been utterly unafraid. But the thought of letting Darren fuck him was certainly overwhelming.

They looked at each other.

"Are you sure?" Darren repeated.

Alistair could imagine Kaiba's condescending smirk were he ever to find out that he had been too scared to go through with it. 'You love talking a big game, don't you?' Kaiba would say, his smirk wider still. 'But you just can't seem to back it up.' But what did Kaiba know? He  _would_ do it; he'd show him!

"I'm sure," Alistair consented firmly, pulling Darren back down.

It went much more quickly after that, Darren guiding him through pulling his pants off so that they were naked on top of each other, Darren lazily jerking Alistair off between them. He'd never hooked up with a virgin before and had abandoned the notion that he was in for a night of mind-blowing sex, but Darren nonetheless found Alistair's inexperience endearing.

"Does that feel good?" Darren asked intermittently between increasingly sloppy kisses.

"Yeah," Alistair murmured, sighing as Darren's thumb ran over a particularly sensitive spot.

"Come on, give it a try," Darren coaxed, getting Alistair to sit up, and Alistair complied, inexpertly attempting to replicate his partner's movements. "Use your mouth."

Alistair licked his lips nervously in preparation before very slowly starting to take Darren into his mouth. A couple of inches in he started to gag and would have backed right off again, but Darren had grabbed a hank of hair at the back of his head and started thrusting into his mouth as he continued to choke. Surely this couldn't be what it was supposed to be like to do this.

Finally, Darren backed off and Alistair could relax his jaw and blink back his tears of discomfort.

"Now get on your stomach, ok?"

Warily, Alistair complied, fixing his eyes on a textbook lying on its side on the floor under Darren's desk: 'How to Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul.' As someone who had actually lost his soul before, Alistair found the notion of ascribing such a serious matter to so trivial a book wryly humorous. He felt Darren's weight shift in the bed momentarily and heard him open and close a drawer in his bedside table. But even when Darren stroked him with lube-coated fingers a moment later, Alistair couldn't stop thinking about the book. Why would graphic design be considered soulless? And if it was, how could that be prevented? As he moaned in pleasure he imagined buying a copy of the book and passive-aggressively leaving it on Kaiba's home office desk. What would Kaiba do then, he wondered, absently pushing himself up onto his forearms at Darren's prompting. Would he storm to Alistair's room and demand an explanation? Alistair gasped when Darren added a second finger alongside the first, his back arching involuntarily, and murmured vaguely for Darren to continue. He pictured Kaiba's set-jaw look of annoyance, imagined he'd make some snarky remark about Alistair's lack of gratitude, but that would quickly change because Alistair would offer to show him his gratitude, and then Kaiba would be the one on top of him like this, caressing him languidly as he prepared to--.

Alistair felt the blood rush from his face as a searing pain ripped through his stomach. For a split second he thought that Darren had stabbed him, but he quickly realized what it actually was and managed to wrap the word 'stop' into his strangled cry of pain, his hands clawed into the comforter.

"Hey, sorry!" Darren quickly pulled out and rested a hand on Alistair's trembling side. "You said you were ok, so I thought…but maybe I didn't use enough lube or something..." But Alistair wasn't listening. The pain had deadened to a dull throb, but he still felt light-headed. 

"I think I should go," Alistair said finally.

"Are you sure? You don't have to."

Alistair felt Darren's concerned eyes on him as he continued his attempt to alleviate the excess adrenaline running rampant through his stomach.

"I'm fine," he snapped, forcing himself into a sitting position so that Darren's hand slid off his side. Queasy and ashamed, Alistair wished he had just stayed in his room and read a book. What a waste of time this had been. If this was what sex was about, he'd sooner take care of it himself than involve anyone else again. Unless of course, Darren was just particularly bad at it. Thanks to Kaiba's sense of chastity, he had nothing to compare the experience with. "Does it always hurt that much?" he asked with petulance.

"No, no, of course not," Darren said quickly, his voice thick with embarrassment. "It shouldn't really hurt at all; you're just not used to it."

Alistair resented having the awkward affair blamed on him, but it didn't seem worth arguing over. And even through his shame he could tell that Darren was trying to be sympathetic, not accusatory, so he ventured another question. "Do you actually have anything to drink?"

"Yeah, for sure."

With his clothes back on and a can of beer in one hand, Alistair could feel his bruised ego starting to heal even though he took exception to the way Darren continued digging into his background and the fact that he seemed so unwilling to believe that he had so little sexual experience.

"Looking at you, I just can't believe you've never done anything before," Darren exclaimed for the third or fourth time, leaning back against his bedroom wall as he cradled his beer in his hands. He studied Alistair's exotic gray eyes and the silky, slightly tousled red hair framing an elfin face.

"I told you: I've kissed someone before," Alistair repeated rather snippily before taking a swig of beer. It tasted only slightly better than his drink at Twist. "Recently," he added for good measure, setting the can on the bedside table before crossing his arms. As he shifted position, the Orichalcos shard on his necklace caught the light from the ceiling lamp and glittered a bright aquamarine.

"What kind of stone is that?" Darren asked, changing the topic at last, and pointing at the necklace.

Alistair's hand immediately went to the jewel at his throat. He'd been barely conscious of still wearing it. "I'm not sure," he lied. "A...friend of mine gave it to me."

"The same friend you kissed?" Darren asked teasingly, and Alistair could have poured his drink on him for returning to that topic again.

"No. Someone else. Why are you so interested anyway? I know, I know: you can't believe I've never had sex before, whatever. But why do you care? Do you have nothing else to talk about?" He realized in that moment that he'd stayed because he was hoping for, not a notch on his bedpost, but someone to talk to besides Mokuba, Trudy, or Kaiba. He'd cared for none of his associates while working for Dartz, but now that he was working towards building a normal life, he'd hoped that it might include friends. But if all people talked about with each other was sex, then what was the point?

Darren was completely perplexed by Alistair's irate tone, and even more so by his searching expression. To him, the encounter had just been about a quick hook-up and then maybe a few drinks and a warm body to sleep next to, but the more annoyed Alistair became, the more he sensed that they hadn't been on the same wavelength at all. It was unexpected, but rather interesting.

After finally opening up the realm of possible topics of discussion, Alistair decided that he might actually like Darren after all. He was heavily involved in social justice issues at Domino University where he was a member of the LGBT commission branch of student government, and oftentimes worked alongside his roommate and fellow Domino Daily journalist in shedding light on human rights issues that impacted the student body. The fervor with which he spoke about his extracurriculars sparked in Alistair an idea that he hadn't considered before. He'd received only minimal schooling growing up, most of which had been administered by his mother after his school had been shut down. But although it would certainly be an uphill battle because of that, college could give him the real second chance at the fulfilling life he craved.

It wasn't until they heard Brittney returning to the apartment that either of them realized how late it had gotten, midnight and one O'clock having long since passed.

"You don't have to go, you know," Darren said when Alistair moved to stand up. He indicated his bed. "There's plenty of room for two."

Alistair paused, knowing that if he were to stay, it would be a sign of a deeper level of commitment than he wanted to make. Darren seemed like an alright person, and perhaps he would be a good friend, but Alistair had long decided that he had no interest in more than that. And he knew from having observed awkward mornings after of Valon's that people tended to perceive sharing a bed as the first step in a romantic relationship, and so he declined as politely as he could, saying that he didn't want to have to pay a fortune in parking. Though he had turned his back to pull on his shoes, he could sense Darren's disappointment.

"That's real," Darren said with forced airiness, lounging back on the bed so that the side of his face was resting on his own crumpled shirt. "And hey, if you want, my friends and I are planning on going to pride night at Byzantium next weekend if you want to come with us. I could text you." He lazily dragged his phone into his hand from where he'd abandoned it on the night stand. "What's your number?"

Somewhat reluctantly, Alistair recited his phone number, unsure how he felt about even so tenuous a connection to someone he'd only just met. And he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to be around Darren without being reminded of the more shameful elements of their evening together. But on the other hand, perhaps that's how one met people these days.

It was only after he was walking back to the parking garage where he'd left his motorcycle that the full impact of what he'd done caught up with him. As dissatisfying as it had been, he'd actually done it; hooked up with someone. It made him feel more jumpy than exhilarated. He felt a degree of pressure to try it again, and at the same time a distinct reluctance to do so.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and increased his pace, the soles of his boots crunching slightly against the grit of the sidewalk. He felt an inexplicable flutter of loneliness tinged with regret.


	11. PictureThis

_"We don't have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it."_

_~Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way we Live and do Business,_ Erik Qualman

**PictureThis**

Seto had been fully immersed in a report from the development lab on the latest tests of Kaiba Corp's highly anticipated VR pods when he heard a motorcycle pulling up the driveway. His eyes went to his home office window in time to catch a splintered beam of light gliding through the foliage. What had Alistair been doing out so late? His paranoia instantly activated, his first thought was that Alistair must have been meeting with his old colleagues to finally bring his long game to fruition and attempt to dismantle Kaiba Corporation for a second time. But even as he thought it, Seto knew it was unlikely. Without a powerful employer, what could Alistair really hope to do? He could be in cahoots with an ambitious underling, Seto supposed, but he could think of no one at headquarters with the deviousness as well as the deceit it would take to actually hurt him. And besides, when would Alistair have even met such a person? So what  _had_  he been up to?

He watched as the garage door closed and debated whether or not to confront his guest once he came upstairs. He could easily beat the information out of him if he wanted to, but the idea of lowering himself to the tactics of a common thug was immensely distasteful. No, if he wanted to know what Alistair was up to, he needed to be careful. Send Saito to trail him, perhaps.

He yawned just then and sat back in his chair, his gaze flicking to the clock on his computer. As much as he wanted to have finished the report, the small number three on the desktop acted as a siren song, calling him to sleep, and he finally shut it down.

As he fell into bed a half an hour later, Seto was still thinking up reasons why Alistair might have been out until three in the morning. It was only after he'd closed his eyes that it occurred to him with an unexpected melancholy that perhaps Alistair's late-night activity had had nothing to do with him at all.

* * *

For the next week, everything appeared to have returned to normal. Alistair did nothing to lead Seto to believe he was on the brink of a foray, Mokuba continued his seemingly never-ending barrage of commentary about Hillary and the friends she'd introduced him to, and Seto went to work and carried on overseeing both the Kaiba Land construction developments and the progress on the VR pods. These activities in addition to his regular workload often kept him at the office until late into the night. However, despite all appearances to the contrary, Seto often checked out by midday, his fingers clacking away at his keyboard, but his mind already at home.

Two distinct topics were keeping him preoccupied. The first was his brother. More specifically, his brother's recent secrecy. Because for all that he liked to talk about his girlfriend to anyone who would listen, Mokuba always managed to neglect to mention where they were going and what they were actually doing every day. Despite not having had the freedom that Mokuba did at that age, Seto felt he had a fairly accurate working understanding of what a fourteen year old boy would do if left to his own devices, and assumed that Mokuba and his newfound friend group hung out together and played video games or went to play Duel Monsters in the park and was none too concerned--especially after having Saito check into the matter to confirm his suspicions.

What was bothering Seto wasn't what Mokuba was doing, but rather that he was hiding it from him, whether purposefully or not. Did Mokuba feel that he no longer needed a confidant in him? The idea was too painful to explore for long, though it lurked on the fringes of his thoughts no matter how he tried to dispel it.

The second thing taking up his focus was Alistair. He'd told Saito and Kanzo to alert him immediately if Alistair left the grounds, and so he knew that he hadn't since returning late Friday night. That should have been the end of it, but it maddeningly wasn't. He prided himself on his ability to bind down any unwanted emotion and was therefore all the more annoyed by his increasingly impossible to ignore his attraction to the Orichalcos warrior. The irritatingly redundant inner monologue about the importance of not indulging his instinct to pin Alistair to his bed and have his way with him had become a skipping record so annoying it made him want to bang his head against a wall in frustration.

A subtle beeping broke into his already divided concentration and in the two seconds it took him to reach over and accept Valerie's message he realized he'd made several typos in the email he'd been writing.

"What is it?" he asked her with a hint of irritation.

Completely unruffled, Valerie informed him that the PR manager and his team had arrived.

Seto briefly closed his eyes before telling her to send him in. He could only imagine what odious new plans Tanaka had cooked up since their last meeting.

Fumito Tanaka was one of the only Kaiba Corporation employees that had survived the Seto Kaiba coup and consequent blitzing of his step-father's staff. He had achieved this mainly through his understanding of ambition and just how close to the sun he could allow it to take him so that he could always bask in its warmth without melting his wings. Early on, he'd made sure to make himself utterly indispensable, his meticulously crafted proposals never failing to procure positive results. Consequently, he enjoyed a certain degree of respect from the incumbent CEO even though he knew the latter didn't particularly like him or his ideas. But Mr. Kaiba's respect was valuable enough to gain him a devoted following within the company as well as a core group of jealous underlings he could boss around, and what more, besides his sizable paycheck, did he really need?

After receiving permission to enter Mr. Kaiba's office, Tanaka signaled his two lackeys to follow him so that when Valerie opened the door, they formed a sort of entourage that never failed to make him feel powerful.

From the moment Tanaka and his posse entered his office, Seto made sure to project nothing more than a grudging willingness to listen, his hands steepled on his desk and his face utterly void of expression. It was the same tactic he used when talking to Pegasus because, like Pegasus, Tanaka had a habit of getting under his skin. And he knew that the public relations manager knew this all too well, but because of his stellar track record and toeing of the line of subordination, Seto was forced to endure him, and even, to some extent, follow his advice.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Kaiba," Tanaka said, his voice as slick as his graying hair. "I hope you're well."

"If you don't mind, I'd rather skip the pleasantries," Seto deadpanned impatiently.

"Yes, of course." Tanaka snapped his fingers and the two members of PR he'd brought with him jumped into action, one quickly setting up a company laptop, and the other inserting a flash drive and portable projector. Within minutes, they'd pulled up their boss's most recent presentation, the Kaiba Corporation insignia now shining on the far wall, but Seto kept his eyes fixed on Tanaka.

"It's no secret that since the rather...  _unfortunate_  events of last spring we've run into a bit of trouble in terms of our image," Tanaka began with an unnecessarily theatrical lilt. "But you'll be pleased to know that in addition to the many projects we have in the works, I've contrived a foolproof plan to not only enhance the success of those ventures--I'm speaking of course of the VR pods and Kaiba Land--but also to elevate your personal brand overall."

Tanaka was in the full throes of his own genius now, his smile one of pure self-satisfaction.

"You recall, I'm sure, the recent tabloid allegations regarding a romantic relationship between yourself and Miss Mai Valentine."

Seto felt his eye twitch and redoubled his efforts to keep all the muscles in his face under control. "Vividly," he replied icily.

"While that may have been wholly fabricated," Tanaka went on quickly, "it did give me some evidence to back up the proposal I have come to you with today. First, let me ask a question: who do you think is the most talked about duelist currently on the circuit?"

Seto gave an exaggerated shrug to spur Tanaka on to his point.

"You might be surprised to know that it is neither Yugi Motou nor even yourself." He snapped his fingers again, and one of his assistants clicked to the first slide of the presentation which depicted several graphs displaying statistics for the top ten most discussed duelists across various mediums including mainstream news and social media. While Seto saw with satisfaction that he and Yugi were neck-in-neck for the most talked about duelists on the mainstream news, he didn't even make the top three on social media. And even more infuriating, when compared with each other, it was clear that, overall, by far the most talked about duelist was--

"Mai Valentine?" Seto said through clenched teeth. "She's hasn't ranked in any major tournament since Duelist Kingdom!"

"You seem surprised," Tanaka observed with no surprise at all. "But let me explain. It's fairly straightforward. As you point out: she's not the best duelist, and yet, people are talking about her. Why? Of course, starring alongside you in an ad could be enough to explain it, but if you trace this trend back even just over a year, she has consistently far outperformed everyone else. And there's a simple explanation as to why that should be the case." Another snap led to a slide featuring a screenshot of Mai's recent posts on a popular app called "PictureThis." On it, Mai had uploaded pictures of herself at various events, provocative selfies, and pictures of her own fake nails and perfume bottles.

"What am I looking at?" Seto demanded, his patience at an all time low for the day.

"What you're looking at is half of the secret to her recent success," Tanaka explained with a grin. "It may look meaningless to us, but to her fans, of which almost two and a half  _million_  follow her on PictureThis, these pictures offer a window into the life of someone who has crafted herself to be a woman that every girl wants to be and every man wants to be with. And the attention she has gotten for something so simple has resulted in her being offered sponsorships by several major international clothing and makeup companies and even by us, hence her appearance in the Kaiba Air commercial. Additionally, she has seized these opportunities to launch a clothing line of her own and as a platform to discuss women's rights." The two new photos projected onto Seto's wall showed Mai standing at the end of a runway in a skimpy black dress and speaking into a microphone at a radio studio. "In other words," Tanaka continued, subconsciously running a hand down the lapel of his well tailored suit, "a woman with no ostensible right to such fame is nonetheless a rising success due purely to the power of social media."

"This is what I pay you for?" Seto snapped, his hands, though still steepled in front of him, pressed so tightly together that they were starting to shake. "Anyone with half a brain could have told me that!"

"That may be so," Tanaka agreed, his dark eyes glittering in a way that left Seto in no doubt that he was about to be told something he wouldn't like. "But then ask yourself this, Mr. Kaiba: why is it not you at the top of those charts?"

"What does it matter?" Seto asked angrily, hoping to delay the inevitable conclusion.

"It matters because just like you were the one to elevate our company to a higher level than anyone would have thought possible, now that that same company is, if I may be so bold, in a slump, you're the best investment we have at the moment, as proven by your recent work with Giorgio Armani."

"What do you propose?" Seto couldn't stop himself from glaring, the expression causing the two PR reps to shift uncomfortably.

"I propose several things." Tanaka stroked his lapel again. "First, I would highly recommend that we increase your social media presence. The Kaiba Corporation PictureThis account has a moderate following, but I can't say it generates a compelling amount of interest. You, on the other hand, as evidenced by the success of Miss Valentine, absolutely would."

"That's your big plan?" Seto scoffed, his posture relaxing considerably. "You're seriously saying that posting pictures of my fingernails on PictureThis is going to get this company out of the slump you claim it's in? Get real. We have two major projects in the works that need my attention; I don't have time for this."

Tanaka's eyes glittered for a second time. "That's where I'm afraid you're wrong, sir." The next slide showed a comparison of discussions online about both Kaiba Land and the VR pods. Even when combined, it barely matched Mai Valentine by half. A second graph compared Mai Valentine to discussions of Seto's alleged relationship with her. It had outranked talk of just her by almost twenty-five percent. "As you can see, the people have spoken. If you want Kaiba Corporation to remain on the tip of everyone's tongue, I believe it's imperative that we provide the content they want so that when you're finally ready to officially unveil your projects, there will be the maximum number of people around to pay for them." Tanaka took his boss's stony silence as a cue to continue.

"It would require minimum effort on your part, sir. I have already shortlisted several photographers and modeling coaches who can teach you how to orchestrate flattering selfies so that in no time you'll be able to set up most of your pictures yourself. You already have experience modeling, so I'm certain it will be no problem for you. And in the meantime, this same team…"

Seto listened in silent horror as Tanaka continued to outline a schedule, mused that allowing the paparazzi a few choice shots wouldn't go amiss, and postulated possible photo ideas. He couldn't bring himself to speak until the PR manager finally seemed to have exhausted himself.

"For the past seven years, I've worked extremely hard to be taken seriously," Seto said, white hot anger dripping off every word. "And I refuse to lower myself to being a desperate media whore." Tanaka's slight, condescending shake of the head was the spark that finally succeeded in igniting his temper. "Who do you think you're talking to?" he demanded, rising from his seat and slamming his palms down hard on the table. "I'm not a washed-up loser that needs to cling to fame by smiling for the paparazzi!"

With an unconcerned third stroke of his lapel, Tanaka said with astonishing candor: "that is exactly what you will be if you don't do this now considering that you haven't been the Duel Monsters world champion for going on four years now."

It was checkmate, and they both knew it. After glaring at Tanaka another moment, Seto sat back down in defeat.

"When exactly would you want to embark on this...endeavor?" he asked icily.

For the next forty minutes Seto allowed Tanaka to walk him through the finer points of the budget proposal he'd already had drawn up and forced himself not to be baited by the smug smirk on his subordinate's face; he'd already disappointed himself by having been rattled enough to lose his temper.

Finally, Tanaka concluded his presentation and sent his flunkies out with the projector equipment and laptop, leaving him alone with their boss.

"I know you're not happy about this," Tanaka said, not able to look the CEO in the face even in this moment of triumph. "But I really do think it's what's best. Not just for you and the company; it's good for your employees to see their leader in a more relatable light."

"And why might that be?" Seto asked sharply, his slightly slumped posture suddenly much more rigid. As much as he hated how much of a weasel Tanaka was, the trait meant that he often knew more even than Seto himself did about the goings on within headquarters.

"Well," Tanaka began, smoothing down his hair. "Let me put it this way: there's hardly anyone here who isn't at least a little afraid of you. After all, there were quite the wild rumours surrounding the sudden passing of your father…" He paused pointedly to inspect his cuticles before continuing. "But we were all scared of him too, and see how easily we all moved on. Those of us that are still around to talk about it anyway. Just something to think about." He busied himself with straightening the papers of the grudgingly signed contract to allow his boss to mull over his meaning.

Without waiting to be dismissed, Tanaka scooped up the contract and made for the door where he paused briefly to look back at Kaiba, who was still sitting stolidly at his desk. "I'm very pleased that you're allowing me to move forward with this project - I assure you that the results won't disappoint you."

For a few moments after the door closed, Seto didn't move. He focused all of his concentration on a small dust moat swirling in a sunbeam near his Blue Eyes White Dragon statue.

Its quiet elegance was immensely calming, and Seto allowed himself to put his head down on the desk, cradled in his arms. The notion of having to let himself be fussed over by stylists, coaches, and photographers was exhausting, not least of all because he knew he was going to have to let them touch him. It was the part of modeling that he hated the most. Taking three hours to snap a picture was bad enough, but getting his face prodded by makeup artists, his hair pulled by hair stylists, and his body pushed into poses by creative directors was worse. And to what end? So that millions of people could pull the image apart or, even more unpleasant, salivate over it. He wanted to be known for his skills as a duelist, for his prowess as a businessman, not because of how he looked sitting on a horse or whatever other cliched concept the photographer could dream up. 

He lay quietly with his head in his arms for ten minutes, unwilling to even correct the email that still awaited him on his screen. A headache pulsed in his right temple, and even with his eyes closed the lids felt heavy. He knew he could push through his tiredness as he had so many times before, but today it didn't seem worth it.

The prospect of driving home and lying in bed for the rest of the day finally spurred him to raise his head. He glanced at the clock on his screen and decided that even though it was only five, there was nothing else to be accomplished that day. He logged out of his email, shut down the PC, collected his briefcase from under the desk, his jacket from a wardrobe at the far side of the room, and shut the lights off on his way out, pausing briefly to look out the window.

The sky was a uniform blue, and the accompanying afternoon sunshine had seemingly hoodwinked a large portion of the population into thinking the day was warm. He could see the movement of them, so far down below where he stood, no more than specks, the cars marginally larger dots. Mostly, though, the view was dominated by the glinting windows of the other skyscrapers downtown. Inside, he could imagine men and women scurrying about, trying to outperform each other and pull themselves up just one more rung. But from the outside, the buildings were calm pillars of steel and glass, betraying nothing of the melee Seto knew to be waging within. They were certainly much more beautiful that way.

As he walked past her, Seto met Valerie's eyes and nodded subtly in response to her look of inquisition. She nodded back and returned to her computer screen. He'd always liked her more than the majority of his employees. She was punctual, didn't complain, spoke only when necessary, and was never more than absolutely to the point. Were it not for the band on her ring finger, he might have considered marrying her. It would at least have been a very professional and calm union. Granted, he knew very little about her, but that was rather the point. In contrast, he felt she knew him quite well. For instance, he knew from their momentary interaction that she understood he wasn't going to return to his office that day and was already working to rearrange his schedule accordingly.

Even though he was now on his way home, Seto couldn't actually relax until he was sitting behind the wheel of his Porsche and driving down the highway. Since earning his license the year before, Seto had loved driving. It was an absolutely solitary activity for the most part, and aside from the occasional honk, it was quiet, the only soundtrack provided by the purring of the engine and the whooshing past of the other cars. It always offered a space for him to either think or switch off where possible. Today, he chose to switch off. Instead of thinking about Mokuba or Alistair or Tanaka, he focused fully on the road, the front of his car eating away at the yellow stripes until he pulled off the highway.

As the car glided more slowly down the residential street, Seto couldn't help but recall the first time he'd ever made the drive, now almost a decade ago.

He and Mokuba had been told to don their nicest clothes, which in his case had been a fraying blue sweater vest and an off-white dress shirt that had barely fit. They'd been shepherded to Gozaburo Kaiba's waiting limo with their two small bags of belongings.

Seto could still remember how the car had reeked of cigar smoke even though their adopted father hadn't been in attendance, too busy, it had been explained to them by Edwin, to pick them up. He'd felt so triumphant that day. So proud of himself for having gotten them out of the orphanage. He remembered pulling up this very street, dead leaves twirling past the windshield and half barren trees revealing increasingly larger and grander homes, until finally they'd pulled up to the gates of the manor house that he pulled up to now.

Two stone pillars with an iron gate stretched across offered a tantalizing view of the monstrously large white house. There had been many times since he'd come into ownership of the estate that Seto had considered selling it to escape the memories it contained, but found himself unable to do so. He had earned it, wrested it from Gozaburo against all expectation. It was his trophy. Perhaps the shadows were a part of that trophy too. And because Mokuba had never expressed any wishes to move, they stayed.

After parking, Seto checked Mokuba's schedule on his phone and saw that his brother would be busy with his tutors for another several hours, which was just as well.

Inside the house, he went to the first floor kitchen and was happy to find the fridge well stocked with leftovers and selected a chicken salad sandwich which he ate lazily over the sink. Once he'd eaten, he meandered upstairs to his bedroom, wondering idly where Alistair was. Not that it mattered.

* * *

Alistair was sitting in the Kaiba library with Sewell napping on his lap. A worn copy of _War and Peace_ was open on a small wooden table beside him, but his concentration was focused on the screen of his phone. More specifically, on the text displayed there. Darren had sent the message over fifteen minutes before, and Alistair had been attempting to interpret it ever since. The message itself was a simple "hey" without even so much as a punctuation mark. It was accompanied instead by a smiley face made up of a colon and half a set of parentheses. He'd determined that 'hey' was nothing more than an invitation to communicate, but he'd been reluctant to respond because of the smiley face. Was it merely a friendly gesture, or was it a subtle come-on? If it was friendly, he felt he ought to write back to maintain their fledgling friendship, but if it was a come-on, he intended never to speak to Darren again.

His musings were interrupted by a follow-up text: 'what are you up to?'

Alistair made a snap decision that Darren was just being friendly and texted back. This led to a rather stiff multi-message conversation before Darren got around to his true objective:

'Some friends and I are going to hang out to watch the american duel monsters semi-finals before byzantium. Wanna join?'

Alistair hesitated, his fingertips hovering over the keyboard. Truthfully, it didn't seem like much fun. But what else did he have to do? He was wary of Darren getting the wrong idea, but if it came to that, he could easily say no, and if that made it awkward, he could leave. Simple. He sent an affirmative answer, set his phone aside, and reached for _War and Peace_ with renewed vigor.

* * *

Saito Hajime had undertaken many unsavory tasks in his duties as both security and bodyguard for the Kaibas, but had anyone ever bothered to ask him, he would have said that overall it was a tedious job. And frustratingly dull, his days spent sitting silently in the booth near the front gate and opening and closing the door. Occasionally he was asked to accompany Mokuba to the mall, but that was about the biggest thrill he got these days. He stayed on despite the squandering of his abilities because, he had to admit to himself, he'd become complacent. There was a familiarity in his exasperation at Mr. Kaiba for throwing himself headlong into dangerous situations without asking for his backup despite that being the reason for his employment. There was a serenity in the long hours he spent at the gates. And yet, he couldn't deny that he'd felt a rush of excitement when, at 7:04pm, he'd opened the front gate to let Alistair onto the road. He'd immediately called his employer who, with momentary and unexpectedly sleepy hesitation, gave the order that Saito had been hoping for:

"I'll get Kanzo to cover for you. Follow him."

Despite his desire to pounce on this golden opportunity to dust off his special forces training, Saito carefully secured the booth, mindful to check the cameras one more time, but all on the property seemed still, as usual.

With quiet haste, he made for his car, parked several streets over, and quickly traced what he assumed was Alistair's path to the city down the highway.

* * *

From the moment he parked his motorcycle, Alistair had the feeling that something was off. He was sharply aware of the gentle wheezing of the rusty car that had pulled in next to him as the driver tried to steer it between the lines, and of the dry scratching of several flattened fast food cups dragged across the concrete by a stiff wind blowing in through the wide gaps between the first and second level of the parking garage. And yet, despite there being nothing obviously amiss, Alistair was on-edge by the time he made it down to the street.

 _But why would anyone be watching me?_  he wondered even as he glanced furtively behind him. Raphael and Valon were presumably long gone, Dartz was gone, and no one else in Domino knew him except for Darren, who he was on his way to see.

His imagination reminded him that it could be a mugger, hoping to score his wallet. But why choose him? He didn't think he looked an easy or obvious target. And even if he did, there was no one around, so why not attack him then? After walking to the end of the block without being able to shake the feeling, he felt forced to accept that he was just being unnecessarily jumpy. It was probably just the result of having lived under the constant threat of danger as a child, and then operating as a shadow himself as a teenager by stalking Seto Kaiba. Who he absolutely didn't want to be thinking about. He shook himself and tried to focus instead on how best to approach his impending social interaction.

* * *

 It became quickly clear to Saito after the initial rush that accompanied any surveillance job that Alistair wasn't doing anything of particular interest much less plotting to endanger Mr. Kaiba. He trailed behind, lithe and light of foot as a cat, sliding in and out of dark swathes of shadow while keeping a clear eye on his target. Alistair, it appeared, had better senses than most people Saito had ever followed, and it seemingly took him several blocks before he finally relaxed.

After that, it was easy. The deserted road fed into a largely populated street along which scores of people jostled past each other. They were mostly college-age, Saito noticed with some dismay, meaning it would be harder for him to fade into the crowd. He chose a different tact, and ambled seemingly carelessly through them, a businessman of some description making his way home for the night. He was careful not to bump into anyone around him and remained as far behind as he could without losing sight of the back of Alistair's head.

Several blocks later, Alistair turned abruptly down a side street leading to an outcropping of hideously modern apartment buildings that jutted up from the street like crooked teeth. Here, Saito returned to slipping in and out of doorways to avoid detection, resisting the urge to curse when his foot knocked into a soda can hidden by the lip of the curb. It rubbed hollowly against the concrete, but Alistair appeared not to have heard.

* * *

Seto had been sleeping fitfully when the buzzing of his phone woke him from yet another uncomfortable dream about his step-father. Even as he reached for the phone, his hand trembled at the as yet only partially dissolved image of Gozaburo leering over him.

"What is it?" he asked with a slight rasp.

"I've been tracking Alistair as you requested," came the monotone reply from his bodyguard. "I can give you a report, but I doubt it will be of much interest to you."

"That's for me to decide," Seto snapped, sitting up more fully in bed, blinking sleepily as a beam of light hit him squarely in the eyes. He quickly looked away, annoyed at having forgotten to turn the bedroom light off until he realized with a start that it was daylight and that he'd been asleep since the evening before. "What was he up to?" he barked as he quickly pulled himself out of bed. He stabbed the speaker button on his phone and glanced at the time, relieved that he was only slightly off schedule.

"I followed him downtown," Saito explained. "He went to visit a student or group of students living in the high rises near the university. He stayed there for about three hours, then came back down in the company of four of the aforementioned students. Then they went to a nearby dance club before returning to the apartment at around three this morning. Should I stay in position?" Saito asked with such a faint trace of humor that Seto wasn't sure he hadn't imagined it.

"No, of course not," Seto replied snippily even as his stomach constricted rather painfully--a side effect of having missed dinner the night before, he was sure.

By the time he'd showered and gotten dressed, Seto had received two messages that ruined the already fragile chance of him having a good day. The first was from Tanaka, letting him know that he'd already assembled a team for Seto's PictureThis debut. The second was a follow-up wherein Tanaka relayed a message from a so-called expert celebrity photographer that Seto's own house would be the ideal location for the shoot because it would come across as the most 'authentic.' Too defeated to even argue, Seto agreed. This led to a third message and the absolute final nail in the coffin: Tanaka proposing that they meet over lunch that day to discuss a plan of action before actually taking the picture the day after that.

The idea that one picture required two days and an entire team to execute was such a caricature of the celebrity lifestyle Seto almost wished Alistair was in on it so that at least one person would be able to voice the absurdity of it all and reassure him that it was not he but his world that had gone insane.

Over his usual breakfast of bacon and eggs, Trudy had the misfortune of being the one to ask where Alistair was.

"He isn't back yet," she fretted as she poured Seto a second cup of coffee. "I do hope he's alright. Do you suppose we should send someone to look for him?"

"I don't pay my staff to watch over  _him_ ," Seto replied with disdain, picking up his coffee cup and sipping from it unconcernedly. "And anyway," he added when she started to retort. "I know exactly where he is and it's my assumption that he'll stumble back here around lunchtime with a hangover that you're welcome to indulge in curing if you see fit, but I don't pay you to take care of him either so it's hardly a requirement."

Trudy placed one hand on her hip while wagging a finger in his direction with the other. "He's a guest in this house, Seto.  _Your_  guest no less. You ought to show more hospitality. I mean,  _really_. It's quite ungentlemanly."

"I've never pretended to be a gentleman," Seto snapped petulantly. He hated it when Trudy lectured him as though she were the exasperated personification of his conscience rather than his housekeeper. Especially because he knew that, like Mokuba, her attempts to steer his moral compass in the right direction were usually based on truth. But he really was incredibly disinclined to show his 'guest' any sympathy.

* * *

It was with a painful jolt and a piercing headache that Alistair awoke. When he reluctantly opened his eyes with a soft groan, he saw that he was lying on the floor of Darren's living room, his face inches from the thick wooden legs of the coffee table and his back against the couch. More than a little disoriented, he realized he must have fallen onto the floor, though he couldn't remember sleeping on the couch to begin with. He allowed the table leg to fall out of focus as he tried to recall what had happened the night before. He remembered watching the tournament on TV. He remembered that they'd left to go to Byzantium. He remembered not really knowing what to order and just following everyone else's lead. He had splintered memories of sitting on a bright white tiled floor, of snatches of bass-heavy music. And he'd been talking to someone. He scrunched his eyes shut and tried to force himself to remember.

One of Darren's friends? Possibly.

And then another murky memory presented itself: a magnetic urge to collapse against this person and kiss them passionately. On the couch.

Alistair forced himself into a crouched sitting position so that he could tentatively peek over the edge.

To his by then only slight surprise, a young man was lying pressed against the back of the couch, disheveled brown bangs hiding his face down to his nose. His head was resting against a cushion next to what Alistair realized was his own shirt. All but one bare shoulder was covered by the dark fleece blanket that had previously acted as a throw cover. Alistair was afraid to check if the man was wearing anything at all under the blanket, but reasoned that since he himself was still wearing his pants, the other man most likely was too.

After looking around and judging that they were alone in the room, Alistair decided that after a brief detour to the bathroom, it was time to go. There would be plenty of time to piece together what had happened once he was no longer physically faced with anyone that had been involved.

He struggled to his feet as quietly as he could, wincing against the excruciatingly sharp headache in his temple. Swaying slightly, he stumbled to the nearby bathroom and collapsed against the countertop, wishing he could have left the light off to save himself the added layer of discomfort.

His hair was a tangled nest of dark red made even more dramatic by the pallor of his normally healthy skin. Two dark smudges under his eyes complimented the morning after look.

But for all that he looked like a zombie of himself, it had been the best night's sleep he'd gotten in if not years, certainly months. No nightmares had awoken him, and indeed, he wasn't sure he'd dreamed at all.

After washing up in the bathroom and drying his face on a fluffy towel hanging on the back of the door, Alistair stole back into the living room, pleased that the man on the couch was still passed out, and no one else appeared to be awake yet. He slipped back into his t-shirt, holding his breath as he inched it off the couch, retrieved his rumpled jacket from the floor on the other side of the coffee table, and started looking around for his shoes which he quickly found flung beside the door.

He stealthily retrieved Britney's keys from a hook on the wall and held them away from each other between his fingers so they wouldn't rattle, recognizing only as he went to turn it in the lock that he'd be unable to lock the door behind him. But surely, no one would think to try the door, and if they did, they'd wake up the man on the couch, who would undoubtedly alert everyone else in the apartment, and the problem would be easily resolved.

The door opened obligingly, and before putting the keys back on the hook, Alistair double-checked that he still had everything he'd come with, minus perhaps, a healthy dollop of his dignity. Mokuba's debit card along with a small wad of cash still resided safely in his wallet, and his phone was in his jacket pocket, pulsing gently to alert him of its impending death. But there was nothing he could do about it until he got back to the Kaiba estate.

It wasn't until he'd quietly closed the door of the apartment that Alistair was able to focus on the next part of his journey: retrieving his motorcycle. But even as he took his first step in that direction, nausea caused his stomach to roil uncomfortably and he paused to lean against the beige hallway wall. He had no idea what the contents of his stomach were at that moment, but he had no interest in seeing it splattered over the cheap linoleum. Taking several deep breaths in an attempt to keep everything down, he took another tentative step, relieved the elevators were close at hand.

* * *

 Trudy had hoped that Seto would be wrong, but as she was setting the dining room table for lunch, she heard footsteps coming from the back of the house. Mokuba never came before he was called, Seto was at work, and her husband was overseeing the clearing of the gutters, so there was only one person it could be.

"Are you feeling up to lunch?" she asked without pausing, beginning to lay out the second set of silverware she'd brought up just in case.

Behind her, Alistair started in surprise that Trudy could tell how he was feeling without even seeing him. "Not exactly," he admitted. The ride back had been torturous, every bump jostling his stomach until he'd finally pulled over and puked in the gravel at the side of the road. All he wanted to do now that he'd finally made it back was down a liter of water before sleeping for at least a year.

Trudy collected the silverware again with a sigh and turned to face him. She tutted when she saw the state of him. "Rough night?" she asked pointedly before pouring him a glass of water from the pitcher on the table.

He quickly gulped it down, collapsed into a chair, and poured himself a second. "I...er...met up with a few friends and I had a little too much to drink I think." The latter part of his statement was made in a sheepish mumble.

"Never mind," she relented, seeing that he really was in a bad way. "You ought to eat something in any case. I don't have time for anything nice, but I think I have a few cans of chicken noodle soup in the pantry. I'll heat one up for you. And drink a lot of water in the meantime," she added unnecessarily.

"What's going on?" he asked her, sensing that her underlying tone of annoyance wasn't aimed at him.

"You can tell, can you?" she asked, no longer trying to hide how put out she felt. "The cleaners will be coming in an hour to do my job for me with their fancy machines and chemicals. As though I don't keep this place spick and span. And it isn't easy, mind, but even the rooms that don't get used, I go in and I clean at least once a week. And Isobel too. Between us, there's hardly a speck of dust anywhere. But they always manage to find a way to make it seem like we're all living in filth!"

Alistair had taken the time while she ranted to drain another glass of water and was already starting to feel less on the brink of death. "I've always thought it was really clean here," he commented. "So why the sudden need for a whole team of professional cleaners?"

She closed her eyes and shrugged. "Seto's having some of his colleagues to the house tomorrow for a secret project or some such thing. God only knows why. I don't think he quite knows himself."

Normally, it was the kind of thing that would pique Alistair's interest, but he was feeling too ill to think much of it.


	12. Powerless

_When I grow up_  
_I wanna be famous_  
_I wanna be a star_  
_I wanna be in movies_  
_When I grow up_  
_I wanna see the world_  
_Drive nice cars_  
_I wanna have groupies_

_Be careful what you wish for 'cause you just might get it  
You just might get it_

_~When I Grow up,_ The Pussycat Dolls

 ******Powerless**

    Mokuba had been lying on his stomach in bed texting Hillary when he heard the knock on his door.

      “Hey, Seto,” he greeted his brother, setting his phone aside and sitting up. “Everything ok?” Seto didn’t often come to his room so late at night unless there was something wrong, and the weariness in his brother’s face was certainly an indication that he’d had a long and stressful day.

    “Do you mind going in tomorrow to run the VR pod tests?” Seto asked, the tiredness he felt extending to his voice. “I have to deal with Tanaka’s latest scheme.”

    “How come Tanaka always asks you when he knows how much you hate doing marketing stuff?” Mokuba asked with a slight whine in his tone. “He never asks me.”

    “Believe me, I wish he did,” Seto sighed, sinking onto Mokuba’s leather couch and resting his forehead against his palms. “I had to spend three hours listening to him and his ‘experts’ argue over where to take my picture for an idiotic app because for some reason that translates into sales.”

    Seto had fully expected Mokuba to laugh and make light of his moodiness about the shoot. It was in fact what he wanted from his brother; the less of a big deal that could be made about the situation, the easier it would be to get through it. But Mokuba didn’t laugh.

    “Is it really so bad?” Mokuba demanded hotly, and Seto looked up in surprise. Far from looking amused, Mokuba was scowling. “You act like getting to be in magazines and on billboards is some kind of punishment. You’re famous! Everyone wants to be famous and get all that stuff, but all you do is complain about how stupid it is! And it’s not like anyone’s _forcing_ you to do any of it. If you really hated it that much, you’d say no, but you don’t.” He turned away to address the text that lit up his phone screen. “So just shut up about it.”

    Seto stared at his brother in astonishment. He wanted to be able to believe that this was the result of Alistair’s continued meddling, but he knew that wasn’t true. His brother had always been, as Alistair had in fact pointed out, his biggest supporter, always there to cheer him on from the sidelines, always defending him to Yugi and the rest of the ‘Geek Squad.’ But it seemed that Mokuba was no longer content to be his cheerleader, and Seto could hardly blame him. Nonetheless, it made him incredibly sad that for the first time in their lives a wall existed between them. Of course, he could explain to Mokuba why he hated it all so much, and Mokuba would understand, but Seto knew that such a conversation would be impossible to ever have.

    “Fine,” he said finally, getting up from the couch and preparing to leave when Mokuba gave no indication that he wanted to continue talking. “The tests are scheduled for eleven. I’ll have Alfred pick you up at nine-thirty.”

    Mokuba jerked his head in acknowledgement without looking up from his phone screen.

   “Well, goodnight.”

    “Uh huh,” came his brother’s reply.

    After softly closing Mokuba’s door, Seto frowned sadly. Fights between himself and Mokuba had always been exceedingly rare, and yet, within the last few months Mokuba had been far pricklier than Seto had ever seen him. How much of that, he wondered, could be attributed to his brother’s adolescent need to rebel and how much of it had he himself created by his own poor parenting? He had a sudden wild desire to ask Alistair about it, as Alistair seemed confident that he knew him so well. He would never do such a thing, of course; it was none of Alistair’s business. But maybe there was something else he could get from his former adversary.

* * *

     Alistair had spent the remainder of the afternoon in his room, ostensibly to stay out of the way of the crew that arrived just after lunch to give the manor a deep clean. Really, though, he had wanted to nurse his hangover in quiet solitude.

     Not an hour after returning to the mansion, Darren had texted him, asking if he had survived his walk of shame. Alistair had ignored the message at first, but finally decided to allow Darren to make fun of him in exchange for information about the night’s events.

     Darren had told him, not without humor, that the person he’d hooked up with was an acquaintance of his from some student organization.    

    ‘I tried to tell you that he’s a total douchebag,’ Darren had written. ‘But you just said ‘so is Kaiba, so who cares?’ it was pretty funny, and I mean, clearly Luke was ok with the comparison.’

    At that, Alistair had actually hidden his face in the pillow in embarrassment for so long he fell asleep, only waking up again twenty minutes later to the sound of his phone buzzing four times in a row.  

    The first was Darren telling him that Luke had asked about him, the other three were  screenshots of exactly that conversation.

                                                                     

                                                                    Luke: sorry for falling asleep on your couch last night XD

                                                                    Darren: no worries. My couch doesn’t get nearly enough action anyway haha

                                                                     Luke: lol yeah

                                                                     Luke: actually, do you have his number?

                                                                     Luke: I never thought I’d be into playing with fire but he was really hot

                                                                     Darren: dude you can’t say stuff like that

                                                                     Darren: that’s so bad

                                                                     Luke: come on

                                                                     Luke: you know what I mean    

    

    Yawning, Alistair stared at the messages in puzzlement, unsure what exactly to make of them. He was attempting to decide how to respond when there was a brisk knock on his door.

    “Yeah?” he asked when Kaiba, preceded by the pungent smell of his cologne, entered the bedroom. A part of him wanted to make a joke about how, despite his grand declaration, Kaiba had been unable to resist him for more than a week, but on the off-chance that that wasn’t why Kaiba was there, he abstained.

    “I’m going to tell you something,” Seto began cryptically, closing the door with the heel of his house shoe. He realized as soon as he went to take a step forward that the hem of his duster had gotten caught and leaned against the door frame instead.  “Knowing full well that you’re probably going to do the exact opposite of what I want you to do.”

    “Are you trying to use reverse psychology on me?” Alistair asked in mild amusement, sitting up and swinging his legs off the bed.

    “No,” Seto snapped. “And just stay there. This won’t take long.”

    “Yeah, alright,” Alistair conceded, easing back onto the mattress. “What is it?”

    “Some of my...colleagues are going to be here tomorrow.” Seto couldn’t keep the annoyance out of his voice.

    “And you want me to stay out of the way,” Alistair cut in. “Fine.”

    Seto scowled at being interrupted, but managed to keep his tone even. Mostly. “No, what I want is for you to get out of the house, but I know you: you’ll just try to sneak back in to spy on me. And even if you don’t, I’ll have to spend the entire afternoon keeping an eye out for you, and frankly, I’m not in the mood. What I’m actually asking you to do is not to let anyone see you when you do inevitably try to watch.”

    “Why would I want to watch some boring business meeting? I was never actually trying to take over your company, remember?”

    Seto gave a small sigh and closed his eyes briefly in what Alistair was surprised to see was embarrassment. “It isn’t a business meeting. It’s a photoshoot.”

    Try as he might, Alistair couldn’t stop himself from snorting in laughter before quickly composing himself again. “A photoshoot, huh?”

    Seto crossed his arms and forced himself not to look away. “Yes. It’s a part of my job apparently. And I’m only telling you this so that you won’t need to try to sneak around to find out what’s going on and to inform you that you need to stay out of sight.”

    Alistair studied Kaiba’s face. A flush had been slowly creeping up his cheeks over the course of their conversation, though his gaze remained as steely as always.   

    “Why are you really telling me this?” Alistair asked suspiciously. He could think of no ulterior motive, but Kaiba seemed so uncomfortable that he assumed there must be one.

    “I knew you’d have something to say about it and I decided to cut you off at the pass. So go ahead.” Seto stood a little straighter. “Tell me how shallow and ridiculous it is so we can get it over with.”

    Alistair, still slightly foggy with hangover and sleep, was left feeling absolutely nonplussed. It was as though Kaiba wanted to be laughed at by him. But why on earth would he want that?

    “Why are you doing a photoshoot here?” he asked finally. “Why not...anywhere else? Like your office again?”

    Kaiba sniffed derisively and rolled his eyes. “Because some photographer my PR manager hired thinks it’ll be more ‘authentic’ and ‘relatable.’”

    “Relatable?” This time Alistair did laugh. “For sure. I mean, who doesn’t have a foyer the size of a small apartment?”   

    “Take it up with my PR manager.” It wasn’t until Alistair’s eyes widened in surprise that Seto realized he was smiling wryly and quickly forced his mouth into its usual thin line. “Anyway,” he continued much more cooly. “That’s all I wanted to discuss.” He awkwardly reached sideways to open the door in order to avoid ripping his jacket before striding out of the room. “Later.”

     Alistair was attempting to make sense of the interaction when Sewell startled him by unexpectedly rubbing herself against his ankle. He picked her up and set her on the bed beside him where she promptly rolled onto her side. He absently stroked her stomach, the vibrations from her purring running up his fingertips. What was Kaiba playing at? Towards the end of their conversation it had almost felt like the banter between friends.

* * *

     While he was getting ready for bed, Seto found that talking to Alistair had actually and inexplicably made him feel better. He was still wounded by Mokuba’s anger towards him, but he felt that for the time being, he could ignore that. At least until after the photoshoot.

    He paused as he was putting on his pajamas and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Pulling his turtleneck over his head had slightly tousled his hair, and the fluorescent lights highlighted the scars along his wrist and on his shoulder. Nothing attractive there. He supposed that the hardened lines in his torso were conventionally beautiful, but that’s not why he’d worked so hard to develop and maintain them. Muscle was a sign of strength, a reward for all the hours he’d spent building his body into a fortress he could use to protect himself and his brother. And now he was going to exploit that just so bored wives and teenage girls could get their rocks off imagining scenarios in which they could use him for their own gratification. It was nauseating, but it was nothing he hadn’t done before.

    He’d known when he’d modeled in the past that it was only superficially about selling clothes or plane tickets. But at least he’d had that to hide behind. And Mokuba was right: he could have refused. He could have maintained that it was beneath him to whore himself out to social media. But he’d known from the moment Tanaka had begun his presentation that he’d allow himself to be a slave to his PR manager’s genius because it was what was best for Kaiba Corporation. At the end of the day, that was what mattered most.

    He turned away from the mirror and pulled on his pajama shirt. Perhaps after fulfilling his childhood promise to Mokuba and completing KaibaLand, his own feelings could play a larger role in his decisions, but his immediate future seemed to depend on getting through the next day, and, he had no doubt, many other days like it.

* * *

      _He could feel the anger burning like a fever through his body as he paced back and forth in his room, every muscle taught to breaking point. How dare Gozaburo humiliate him by having him thrown out of his office? He was his son, not one of his insignificant lackeys! As he approached the far wall, he kicked it with all of his strength, pleased when the plaster crumbled under his foot, white dust filtering through the hole he'd created. He’d be punished for it, he knew, but for now, it was satisfying._

_Turning away from the wall, he saw the designs for his virtual system scattered across his desk. As he watched, a gust of wind from the open window threw the papers to the floor, just as Gozaburo had. The momentary satiation from kicking the wall extinguished, Seto huffed angrily and threw himself down to collect the end result of months of hard work._

_With all the papers in his hands, he had a sudden urge to rip them in half. What good were his dreams now? The one person with the means of bringing his creation to life had dismissed his ambition and stolen his invention without even acknowledging his genius._

_The papers crumpled as his hands balled into fists. Gozaburo had no right to brush him off. He would force the businessman to concede that they were at least intellectual equals. That the decision of what to do with the virtual system was for both of them to make._

 

_Seto padded along the second floor hallway, a manilla folder clutched to his chest and his footfalls deadened by the dark carpeting. A thick cloud of smoke drifted into the hallway from the drawing room. He could picture his step-father reclinding in one of the leather armchairs, an ashtray at arms reach and a fat cigar wedged comfortably between his fingers._

_As he approached, he could begin to make out a small figure walking towards him through the haze. The boy’s gait was determined, his underlying uncertainty given away only in the tightness with which he held a manilla folder against his chest. Bright blue eyes were fixed on the drawing room doorway._

_Seto wanted to tell the boy to turn back, that he was just a stupid child with an over-inflated ego, but as he struggled to speak, he realized he’d fallen over backwards, a hot, heavy weight now wrapped around his throat. He clawed desperately at it, but it had expanded to press against his torso. Looking around frantically, he saw that the boy had disappeared into the drawing room._

 

_“I want to discuss my virtual reality system,” Seto said firmly, fighting back a cough as the smoke from Gozaburo’s cigar wafted into his nose._

_Gozaburo eyed him cooly before leaning over to tap ash off the end of his cigar. “‘Discuss?’ There’s an awfully big word for a child to be using.”_

_Seto clenched his jaw and squeezed the folder a little tighter._

_“Look at you: you’re even pouting like a child,” Gozaburo mocked him with a slight chuckle. “Now get out of my sight; I’m sure you have schoolwork you should be doing.”_

_“No,” Seto said defiantly even as his hands began to tremble. “It’s my design--I get to decide how it’s used.”_

_Gozaburo narrowed his eyes, his thick eyebrows forming a forbidding line across his face. “Have I been so soft on you that you’ve forgotten your place?” he asked, his voice dangerously calm. Seto resisted the urge to touch the collar of his jacket, worn high to hide the thick strip of leather around his neck. “Get out of here now, or you’ll regret it.”_

_“No.” Seto glared at the man in the chair._

_For a moment, Seto thought he’d won, that finally he’d succeeding in earning his step-father’s respect. Then Gozaburo rubbed out the end of his cigar against the bottom of the ashtray, causing a brief puff of ash to rise into the air._

_“Come with me,” Gozaburo commanded, getting up from his chair. “Now, boy!” he added when Seto failed to move. Sighing in annoyance, Gozaburo grabbed him by his upper arm, his grip tight enough that it cut off the circulation._

_Gozaburo marched him down the hallway and forced him through the door to the guest bedroom. There was nothing frightening about the twilit view of the back garden through a large bay window. Even less so about the queen-sized bed tucked into the corner, it's beige headboard exceedingly bland. But everything about the room filled Seto with a leaden dread._

_Gozaburo closed the door before turning to face his adopted son, his bulk effectively blocking the exit. “You wanted a discussion,” Gozaburo began, his tone much calmer now. “You want me to treat you like an adult?” He suddenly extended his hand. “Give me that.”_

_Tentatively, Seto held out the folder only to have it snatched from him and tossed carelessly on the bedside table, several pages fanning out across the polished wood._

_“I will discuss the future of the virtual system with you after you prove to me that you aren’t the weak-willed, snivelling brat you’ve always shown yourself to be.”_

_“How,” Seto replied at once._

_“I’m going to make you an offer. Your response will either prove that I was right about you all along, or that the training I’ve provided for you is finally yielding results. However,” he continued menacingly, his dark eyes boring into Seto's. “If you decline my proposition, not only will we never speak of your gaming nonsense again, I will show you once and for all that no matter how smart you may be, you are powerless.”_

_Seto swallowed, but otherwise gave no physical indication of his growing fear. “What’s your offer?”_

_“I’m going to use your virtual system as I see fit, as is my right as the leader of Kaiba Corporation. However, I am willing to indulge in your little side project. I won’t give you a large budget, but if you’re as clever as you think you are, you shouldn’t need one.”_

_Seto almost fell to his knees in relief. Sharing the design was better than he could have hoped for._

_“This offer comes with a condition,” Gozaburo continued, and Seto immediately tensed once more. “At Kaiba Corporation, it’s survival of the fittest, and certainly no son of mine can be allowed to humiliate me by falling victim to an Achilles heel, do you understand?”_

_“I’m not weak,” Seto said through clenched teeth, though he’d become aware that the ground was beginning to come out from under him._

_“Then prove it to me now.” His step-father had moved from the door to stand in front of him so that Seto had to look up into his face._

_Seto could only guess at what kind of test Gozaburo meant to set him, but he was determined to overcome it. He’d allowed his step-father to get the best of him for the past two years and now bore the scars to prove it, but here, finally, was his chance to prove that he was a man._

_He was certain it would hurt, whatever it was, but if a few more wounds were what it took to finally gain a taste of the freedom he craved, so be it. A chance to step out of his step-father’s shadow, and one step closer to his and Mokuba’s dream._

_Even though his limbs shook and his heart felt like it was trying to claw its way up his throat and every instinct screamed at him to shove past the man blocking his path and flee to the safety of the hallway, Seto managed to keep his voice steady as he prepared to make the pact. “What do you want me to do?” His level of foreboding intensified when, instead of looking impressed by his courage, Gozaburo smirked as though on the verge of catching a mouse that had only ever had the illusion of escape._

_“Send your brother back to the orphanage.”_

_Seto’s mouth fell open in a horrified gasp as he took a step backwards, Gozaburo’s warning now echoing in his mind. ‘If you decline my proposition I will show you once and for all that you are powerless.’ This had been a terrible mistake. He should have stayed in his room. He should have bided his time instead of running to his step-father with his invention so hastily._

_“Is that a no?” Gozaburo asked the terrified boy, stepping towards him and forcing him further back towards the windows._

_Seto shook his head vigorously as he felt his back touch the glass. He wanted to throw himself on the floor and beg for Gozaburo to forgive his arrogance. He stared pleadingly into his step-father’s cold brown eyes._

_“So you’ll send your brother away?” Gozaburo clarified, his voice lilting upwards in mock disbelief._

_“I can’t do that,” Seto whispered hollowly, looking away at last, his gaze trained on the white shag carpet. He flinched when Gozaburo’s warm hand tilted his face up._

_“Is that your final answer?” he asked quietly._

_“Yes.”_

_“You accept the consequences of this decision?”_

_Seto took a deep, shuddering breath and closed his eyes. “Yes.”_

* * *

     Pain erupted along Seto’s side as he attempted to crawl past his step-father to the door, but Gozaburo had grabbed his foot, anchoring him in place. Seto attempted to grab a fistful of the carpet so he could pull himself forwards, but something was wrong. Someone had replaced the shag with something more plush and he couldn’t get a strong grip on it. Through his feral panic he saw that other elements of the room had changed. It seemed bigger. And the bedside table was in the wrong place. _This isn’t real,_ he realized even as Gozaburo’s hand around his ankle still seemed to drag him backwards towards the bed.

    Feeling much like a drowning swimmer finally forcing their head above the surface of the water, Seto gasped in a breath. With a jolt, he pulled himself to his knees, yanking his foot free.

    He wasn’t in the guest bedroom, he was on the floor of his own room. Even as reality started to sink in, he couldn’t stop himself from shaking while his heart beat painfully against his ribs. He shivered and hugged himself only to jerk his arms back at the dampness of the shirt that clung wetly to his body.

    He closed his eyes. He’d had a nightmare and fallen out of bed. Gozaburo hadn’t been grabbing his foot; it had gotten tangled in the blankets.

    Slowly, he attempted to pull himself to his feet even as his trembling legs threatened to betray him. As he peeled off his sweat-drenched pajamas, he silently cursed his subconscious. Why _that_ nightmare? It always happened when he was particularly stressed, so he shouldn't’ have been surprised, but as time went by, he had assumed it would stop.

    He tossed his clothes messily into the hamper next to the door before changing into a new set and dragging the bedclothes back onto the mattress. No doubt he’d sweated through them too, but there was nothing he could do about that. Finally, he checked the time on his phone, dismayed that he’d been asleep for just over an hour, leaving morning a long way off.

    Even with the dream world finally fading, his pulse continued to race. Cursing softly, he forced himself back into bed, rolling first onto his left side, then onto his back. He was exhausted, but the adrenaline flooding his system prevented him from getting comfortable.

     _“I’ll prove to you once and for all that you are powerless.”_ Powerless. The word felt like it had been etched into him. Seto shoved his bangs off his face as a bead of sweat ran down his forehead and settled in the middle of his cheek. He rolled over again. He wasn’t powerless anymore. _He_ wasn’t the one whose defeat had been so decisive he’d been forced to retreat into a computer out of self-loathing.

     But still, the shame of having been so powerless was impossible to lift. Even worse was Seto’s uncertainty that if the need ever arose for him to make such a sacrifice again, he’d be able to do it. Which was why he had to go through with the stupid photoshoot even if it reminded him all too painfully of a memory he wished so desperately he could forget.   

* * *

    The next time he opened his eyes, Seto was relieved that it was his alarm and not another nightmare that had woken him up. Wearily, he reached over and clumsily turned off the alarm, unsurprised to find that his eyes burned with tiredness. Nonetheless, he forced himself out of bed, reassured by the decidedly not shag carpeting under his feet.

    In the bathroom, he faced his reflection with grim amusement. Sweating through his hair had caused it to stand up at odd angles in some places while slicking against his head in others. His skin looked even more pallid than usual, and there were dark shadows under his eyes. Were he not in such a hurry to get the whole thing over with, he might have considered meeting the styling team as he was just to see if they still thought using him as the Kaiba Corporation poster boy was a good idea.

    Standing under the shower was normally an activity that Seto enjoyed as, much like driving, it was a time he could justify relaxing his mind. Today though, the ghost of his nightmare seemed to lurk even in his brightly lit bathroom so that instead of blackness, he saw rivulets of blood mixed with the water running down the drain when he closed his eyes. He shook his head. He had to focus; there was no time for that. He aggressively rubbed his arms in an attempt to erase the goosebumps that had risen there, but only succeeded in noticing the rough unevenness from the scars on his wrist rubbing against his bicep. Angrily, he banged his fist against the marble wall. This was idiotic!   

     Seto forced all of the lingering fear and anxiety from his dream and all the painful memories it had brought with it into a dark grave at the back of his mind where he hoped this time, it would all stay buried.

* * *

     Alistair knew he had absolutely no business spying on Kaiba’s photoshoot. He knew that spying in fact played into Kaiba’s expectations. But considering that Kaiba needn’t have told him in the first place, and that doing so had clearly been embarrassing for him, Alistair felt that he had little choice but to see what the big deal was. At least, that’s what he’d told himself when he’d wedged himself into the tight corner at the top of the second floor stairs’ elaborate balustrade.

    Trudy had first let in one of Kaiba’s flunkies just after ten. Alistair had immediately recognized the older businessman’s slick graying hair and inappropriately youthful suit. It was Fumito Tanaka; Kaiba Corporation’s PR manager. He was followed in shortly thereafter by a chatty group of much younger people carrying camera equipment and a colorful array of bags; presumably the stylists and photographer. Even from the top of the stairs, Alistair could hear them exclaiming over the stone Blue Eyes White Dragon that loomed over visitors to the estate, and the tantalizing view of an expansive ballroom through the arched doorway under the staircase.

    Kaiba emerged from the dining room to greet his guests and Alistair watched as he and Trudy directed them to the coatroom, which was tucked away to the side of the front doors. Even though he hadn’t gone into work yet, Kaiba was dressed in a crisp white suit.

    He must have invited them into the dining hall, because the party soon followed him out of Alistair’s line of vision. Annoyed, but not surprised, Alistair slunk around to the servants’ staircase that led down to the kitchen, which would offer him access to the dining hall.

    Unsurprisingly, Trudy was standing at the stove, her normally flyaway hair confined to a hairnet. The strong smell of cooking fish rose from a large pan in front of her.  

    “I’m afraid you’re on your own if you want a snack,” she apologized. “I’m up to my elbows at the moment.”

    He glanced at the kitchen counter which was packed with trays of bite-size food.

    “Had I had more than one days’ notice, I might have actually been able to pull together a decent brunch,” she groused. “And heaven only knows the one with half her head shaved is vegetarian, so now I need to make at least a dozen more mushroom pomponettes!”

    “Well, _I_ think everything looks good,” Alistair told her as she whipped a pan of salmon bites off the stove and prepared to carefully place them on top of what looked like an entire tray of tiny quiches.

    “That’s very kind of you,” she replied absently. Suddenly, she looked up at him. “Actually, do you know what would be incredibly helpful? Isobel is running late. Could you possibly take some of these trays upstairs? I told Seto I’d have all this finished by the time they were ready to get started, but now I have to make more pomponettes!”  

    Alistair bit his lip. “I really wish I could, but Kaiba told me not to go out there.”

    “Oh, of course he did,” she grumbled, continuing to delicately place the salmon slices. “Never mind then. Well, in that case, can you wash your hands and finish the frittatas while I go tell George he’s going to have to double as a waiter?”

    “Um...ok. I should just put the fish on top, right?”

    “Yes,” she said over her shoulder, already at the top of the servant’s quarters stairs. “But do it nicely,” she added before disappearing to retrieve her husband.

 

    From the moment he’d laid eyes on the crew that Tanaka had assembled for the shoot, Seto could tell it was going to be just as bad, if not worse, than he’d feared. All four of them, the photographer, the stylist, the make-up artist, and the creative director; a seventeen-year old model that Tanaka had actually introduced as a ‘PictureThis prodigy,’ had kept up a constant stream of mindless babbling since they’d arrived. Scarcely any of it had been directed at him, which was just as well, but being treated like a mannequin had equally started to wear on him once their talk turned to the shoot itself.

    “The lighting in the foyer was good,” the photographer noted, flipping his rhinestone covered baseball cap so that the brim faced backwards.

    “Maybe, but this is a _debut_ photo,” the creative director reminded him pointedly, snapping her gum. “So like, the location has to be...I mean, it’s important, obviously, but it’s just a background.”

    While they argued, Seto stared resolutely into his coffee and tried to tune them out. In the end, it was largely out of his hands, so what did he care about the details?

    “Are you alright, sir?” Tanaka asked him quietly.

    “I just want to get this over with,” Seto said impatiently, his grip tightening around his coffee mug. “I have better things I could be doing with my time.”

    

    In the kitchen, Trudy was trying to talk her husband into a tie.

    “It’s _bruch_!” he’d said exasperatedly. “Anyway, what if it gets in the food?”

    “It won’t if you put it on properly. And you’ll look absolutely incomplete without it,” she added with finality, and he resigned to letting her thread the tie around his neck.

    “Wives always get their way,” George told Alistair with a good-natured sigh. “Remember that before _you_ get married.”

    She swatted him before completing the knot. “Thank you for coming to my rescue ,” she told him, smoothing down the sleeves of his dark suit jacket. “I know how you hate wearing this, but you look ever so handsome when you do.”

    “Well, maybe it isn’t all bad,” George admitted, giving Trudy a quick kiss. “Now, what are the little fish things called again?”

    Sensing that it was his easiest excuse for getting as close to the dining room as possible, Alistair offered to go on ahead and open the door for him. But instead of going back down to the kitchen once George had walked past him balancing two trays of salmon frittatas, Alistair remained at the top of the stairs and peered carefully around the corner. Since Kaiba was at the head of the table, all Alistair could see was his back, but the way his shoulders were slumped let him know exactly how the CEO was feeling.

    George dutifully walked around the group to offer up the frittatas before setting the tray on the table and promising to return with more food.

    “A strange lot, that,” George said softly to Alistair on his way past. “But I suppose that’s what makes them artists, isn’t it?”

    

    After sitting through three courses of hor d'oeuvres in stony silence, Seto decided it was time to get on with it. “Do you suppose we could get started,” he demanded of Tanaka as civilly as possible, though his attempt was unsuccessful.

    Tanaka made a show of dabbing at his mouth with a napkin before addressing the group. “Shall we?”

    Immediately, they all set their plates aside and hauled their various bags onto the table whereupon each assembled the tools of their trade necessary for the day’s work. Aside from Yuna, the creative director, they’d all worked with celebrities before and had no doubt that Seto Kaiba would be high maintenance. They’d discussed as much on the car ride over.

    “I heard from one of the stylists on his last shoot, you know, the ‘dress like a champion’ campaign? Well, she said that he was _awful_ to work with.”

    “So handsome, though!”

    “Why do beautiful people all have to be such divas?”

 

    “That outfit isn’t gonna cut it, darlin’.”

     Seto started when he realized the man’s comment was directed at him and looked up from his intense scrutiny of the table’s woodgrain. It was the photographer, who’d since twirled his baseball cap back on straight so that Seto could see that what he’d taken to be a random pattern was actually the word ‘BITCH’ spelled out in silver rhinestones.

    “What did you just say to me?” Seto demanded with a glare.

    The photographer stood his ground. “The world’s already seen you in a suit, so we need to do something different.” It really ought to have been the stylist who delivered this news, but she’d won the game of rock, paper, scissors to see who’d have to be the one to deliver criticism to their volatile client.  

    “What did you have in mind?” Seto asked suspiciously.

    “Well,” the photographer drew the word out. “We’ve discussed it, and it would be best to axe it altogether.”

    “Excuse me?” Seto’s eyes narrowed dangerously even as his pulse started to race. 

    “It’s not that a suit can’t be sexy,” the photographer said, sounding as if he knew all too well. “But PictureThis isn’t really the place for it.” He looked over his shoulder for the assistance of Yuna, the creative director and PictureThis model.

    She tossed her wavy dark hair over her shoulder as she approached, her hips swinging confidently from side to side under unseasonable ripped jean shorts.  

    “Could you please tell him?” the photographer asked.

     “Yeah, for sure,” she agreed, her startlingly green eyes turning to Seto. “Basically, PictureThis has a dress code,” she explained. “Obviously not literally, but there is one. So like, what you’re wearing is perfect for a GQ cover or something.” She paused to run a hand down his arm, causing him to instinctively shy away. If she noticed, she gave no indication. “But the internet likes skin. As much as you can get away with. So we’re gonna need you to lose your shirt or this whole thing will be pointless.” She squeezed his bicep, her long nails digging into his skin even through his clothes. “And from what I can tell, you have no reason to be nervous about it,” she added with a flirtatious wink that made him want to wash his hands.

    “I’m not taking a shirtless picture,” Seto snapped in Tanaka’s general direction, but the PR manager was distracted by the make-up artist, who was letting him feel the shaved side of her head. Seto pulled his arm out of Yuna’s grasp and stood up at last. “You people work for me, remember? So _I_ don’t have to do anything!”

    “True, but they’re the professionals,” Tanaka reminded him from his perch in the make-up artist’s chair. “They know what they’re doing better than we do.”

    “Maybe, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not posing shirtless!”

    “Will he be able to pull in the same kind of traffic wearing a shirt?” Tanaka asked the room at large as though he and Seto didn’t already know the answer.

    ‘Absolutely not’ was the general consensus, and even as panic and revulsion twisted his gut, Seto agreed to unbuttoning his shirt.

    “I’m not taking it off, though,” he said firmly, daring someone to argue with him.

    It was clear that there was no more negotiating to be done, so as they finished setting up their makeshift stations, the stylist hooked her phone up to a set of speakers and began blasting a pop playlist so loudly that Seto was certain Trudy could have repeated the lyrics word for word from the kitchen. But for the moment, he found he didn’t have the strength left to tell her to turn it down, or better: off; he’d used up the rest of his fight on the shirt argument. It had been non-negotiable, really. Nothing, not even the threat of losing the company entirely would be enough to get him to do that. The stakes were certainly much lower here; all the more reason to give as little as possible. He crossed his arms and waited to see what would happen next.

    Ultimately, it was decided that they would shoot several posts in advance to take advantage of the location. The stylist requested that Seto model several of his own signature looks to which Seto shrugged. The next time George meandered in with a tray of food, Seto told him to have Trudy fetch the clothes from his closet.  

    Trudy was spared the necessity, however, by the arrival of Isobel. After hurrying into the dining room, she apologized profusely to Seto for her tardiness even as she clutched a stitch in her side from jogging up the front garden to the door. Normally, her excuse about how she’d had to drop her kids off at school because her husband was sick would have earned her at the very least a disparaging look. Today, however, Seto ignored her explanation entirely and told her to go upstairs to get the clothes the stylist had requested.

    

    If anyone had asked him before that day, Alistair would have said with confidence that Kaiba no doubt basked in being lavished in the attention paid him on photoshoots. But it was obvious he would have been thoroughly wrong. Criticizing everyone around him was something Kaiba did with a perverse level of zeal, but to Alistair’s infinite surprise, after arguing almost desperately against taking his shirt off, Kaiba seemed to have lost his bite entirely. He’d dociley sat for the stylist, but flinched when she touched his hair.

    When she was finished, he’d mutely stood up before sitting for the make-up artist. Similarly, he cringed the first time she cupped his chin as though her hand were covered in mud, but then the emotion drained from his face and he sat very still.

    It was hardly an intimate moment, but it made Alistair distinctly uncomfortable seeing Kaiba looking so defeated. It reminded him of how he’d looked after Pegasus had sealed his soul away at Duelist Kingdom. But that wasn’t what was happening here, so what was it about this situation that was making Kaiba stare so vacantly, his back hunched protectively inward?

 

    Seto was aware of the make-up brush blending powder into his skin. Was aware of the make-up artist telling him to turn his head to the side. But even as he complied, his movements and sense of touch felt distorted as though being experienced through a mask.

    He saw Isobel return out of the corner of his eye. She draped the clothes across several chairs before retreating back to the kitchen, pausing to talk to someone standing just around the corner before walking down the stairs. So Alistair _had_ come to watch. How predictable. Suddenly, Seto found he could sit a little straighter.

* * *

    The photographer ended up getting his way in the end. For the first picture, they had Seto wear his trademark white trench coat and arm bracers, lest there be any doubt as to who the young man leaning nonchalantly against the giant Blue Eyes White Dragon statue was. It was, in Seto’s opinion, banal enough to be tolerated, and he was able to muster a genuine smirk. He was proud of the statue that guarded the foyer, after all. He’d gone through six artists before he’d found one that he’d trusted to do the dragon justice, and the result had been a beautifully detailed stone Blue Eyes the size of a large horse, it’s wings flexed on the verge of being unfurled, and it’s mouth open in a silent roar.

    “Alright,” the photographer called out over the music still blasting form the makeup artist's speakers. “This looks good; let’s move on.”

    Instantly, the smirk slid off Seto’s face. Standing around in the foyer was one thing, lolling in bed covered in Duel Monsters cards was something else entirely. He wouldn’t have agreed to it at all had it not been for the fact that it was going to act as a buffer, saving him a little longer from the finale.

    No one had insisted, or even dared suggest that they use his bedroom, but using either the guest room or the master bedroom had been out of the question and Seto was too ashamed of what was about to happen to ask his brother for the use of his room. And using his own bedroom didn’t really bother him; it was just the place he slept--it was hardly personal.

    After a short break, the party followed Seto up the grand staircase to the second floor, exclaiming all over again at the luxuriousness of every detail of the house as though touring some European palace.

    Yuna placed herself at the head of the group so she and Kaiba were walking side by side.

    “You must be so annoyed by all of this,” she said understandingly. “I mean, it’s just like, your house, right?”

    Seto shrugged which she took as a sign to continue.

    “You probably get this all the time, but you’re my favorite duelist. I mean, I don’t really know all the rules, but your Battle City tournament was epic and you totally should have won.” When he still didn’t respond, or even look in her direction, she ‘accidentally’ brushed her hand against his thigh as they stepped onto the landing.

    Her touch sent an unpleasant jolt through him and caused some of the numbness he’d shaken off to return.

    It was incredibly strange, putting on his Duel Disk and getting into bed. Isobel had changed the sheets during the first shoot, replacing them with a crisp new set that rustled stiffly as he slid across them. It wasn’t until Yuna directed him to lean against the pillows that he realized he’d been mistaken to think this would be a buffer. There was nothing powerful about lying in bed.

    “Prop your left leg up and lean your Duel Disk on the pillow,” Yuna instructed him. “Now kind of dangle your right leg off the bed.”

    He complied without comment, trying to focus on anything but what was happening. His eyes landed briefly on the framed picture of himself and Mokuba from the day Battle City had kicked off. Mokuba was resting his arm on Seto’s shoulder as they sat together in the helicopter right after Seto had officially announced the start of the tournament. He didn’t know what Mokuba had been thinking, but he’d felt particularly exhilarated, so certain that he was going to defeat Yugi on top of the Duel Tower. It was a far cry from what he was feeling now.

    He barely even noticed when Yuna began artfully dropping Duel Monsters cards down his chest where some clung, others splashing onto the stark white sheet. He recoiled slightly when she tinkered with the cards on his chest, her hand resting there longer than necessary, but otherwise didn’t move. He wasn’t sure he could have.

    “Ah! I get it: like an underwear ad!” the make-up artist exclaimed when the photographer started snapping pictures. And Seto wished more than anything she had kept the observation about how lewd the pose actually was to herself.

    

    Alistair hadn’t dared follow all the way upstairs, but he’d seen enough to know they were going to Kaiba’s bedroom, which was almost as disturbing as the emptiness in Kaiba’s face from before. There was something wrong about all of this. Kaiba had claimed it was all just a part of his job, but it seemed so beneath Alistair’s image of him. Kaiba was proud, certainly, but Alistair would never have called him vain. So why was Kaiba doing this?

 

    When the photographer finally called ‘cut’ Seto was actually startled, and for a brief moment, relieved. Then he remembered what was going to happen next.

    “Ok, so remember: we’re leaving the jeans, the belt, the necklace, and bracers,” the stylist reminded him the second he’d slid his Duel Disk off, setting the extra cards beside it on the bed. “But change into this.” She handed him a white dress shirt.

    The final picture, the one that would serve as his first PictureThis post, was to be shot down by the pool. Tanaka, who had been the estate before for Gozaburo’s parties years back, had suggested it. Had Seto not been feeling so sick, he might have hit him.

    The ornate tilework designed to be reminiscent of a Roman bathhouse was stunning, Seto knew. Even after using it for years, he still found it impressive himself. Sunbeams shining in through the skylight above reflected off the still water. For a brief moment, Seto shut everything else out and inhaled the familiar scent of chlorine. He could do this. He had to do this. Tanaka wasn’t wrong that Dartz’s brief takeover of Kaiba Corporation had wreaked havoc on the brand just as easily as Battle City had built it up. And he needed the company to succeed because it was his livelihood, what he’d dedicated his life to, and something he’d sold his soul for more than once.

    His resolve was enough to prevent him from drowning himself in the pool, but not enough for him to stop his hands from shaking when he at last went to unbutton his shirt. With every millimeter of exposed skin he felt more and more nauseated. But when he finally reached the last button, he found that he suddenly felt nothing at all.

 

    From his vantage point in the changing room, Alistair was once again stuck looking at Kaiba’s back. The dark-haired girl was telling him to lean one arm against the frame of the open French doors while resting the other against his hip so that his shirt slipped down to reveal his bare shoulder. Kaiba held the pose much longer than Alistair was sure would be comfortable while the photographer clicked away. But the girl seemed dissatisfied and stopped him to discuss something Alistair couldn’t hear. To his astonishment, she left only to return shortly thereafter with several bottles of water and proceeded to reach up and dump them down the front and sides of Kaiba’s shirt. Alistair fully expected Kaiba to at the very least snap at her about the water being cold, but as far as he could tell, Kaiba didn’t say anything.

* * *

     “And that’s a wrap!” the photographer called roughly ten minutes later, looking over the pictures he'd taken a final time. The crew high-fived each other in congratulations as though they’d been equally involved in the process. The moment the photographer said they were finished, Kaiba dropped the pose, said something to the girl, and proceeded to walk around the pool towards the changing room.

    Alistair realized with a start that he was trapped because the changing room exit opened into the hallway the crew was about to walk down to get back to the main part of the house.

    When Kaiba saw him sitting sheepishly on the bench, he showed no signs of surprise. Instead, he seemed to avoid acknowledging Alistair altogether, his gaze trained on a towel hanging on a hook on the wall.

    Alistair could see that water was continuing to drip from the tips of Kaiba’s hair and soaked shirt onto the floor, the wet fabric of his shirt clinging to the outlines of his arms and chest. It was perfectly obvious why the creative director had chosen to pour water on him, but Alistair couldn’t imagine that wearing a cold, wet shirt that had almost certainly caused water to seep through the top of his jeans had been enjoyable.

    Kaiba took the towel down from the wall and threw it over his shoulders before leaving the room without a word or even a glance in Alistair’s direction. Watching Kaiba walk away, Alistair was filled with an unexplainable ache of sympathy.

* * *

     Even with the deed accomplished, Seto was forced to sit through Tanaka, Yuna, and the photographer’s debate about which shot to upload and what caption it should have. If anyone had bothered asking his opinion, Seto would have had little to say, so it was just as well that they didn’t. He’d thought that after drying off and putting his suit back on he’d feel more like himself again, but instead the emptiness still plagued him.

    It had lifted, briefly, when he’d seen Alistair in the changing room. If anything, Alistair having been there should have made him feel worse, but somehow it was satisfying that Alistair had seen the truth. He must have seen how Seto’d reviled every second he’d been forced in front of the camera, must have realized then that there was one more thing that separated him from his step-father. Gozaburo would have given anything to have had the opportunity to pose half-naked for hordes of salivating women. Indeed, he’d often paid women for the service. But he, Seto, was nothing like that, no matter that this venture made it seem otherwise. All Seto wanted in life was to design gaming software and hardware, and to be left alone. But he was relieved that of anyone who could have borne witness to his utter humiliation that day, it had been Alistair.

    

    Finally, the trio across the table reached a consensus and sent the photo to Seto’s phone. Without more than glancing at it, Seto uploaded it to PictureThis before briefly handing his phone over to Tanaka to enter in the caption and tags. Then it was out of his hands which both left him relieved and terrified and made him wish he could hide until the ramifications of the upload blew over. Until the next time. At least he’d had the foresight to turn the notifications off.

    Not caring that it was rude, Seto told Tanaka that his housekeeper would see them out before leaving the dining room, ignoring the disappointed look on Yuna’s face as he passed by.

    Only once he’d escaped to the blissfully silent second floor could Seto finally breathe again, the nothingness replaced by shame and exhaustion. But the moment he opened the door to his room, intending to take a short nap before forcing himself to go to work, Seto could smell them: their perfumes and products. He knew he couldn’t sleep there. Not yet. But he was so tired…

    He slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Just for a moment, he could rest here, and then he’d decide what to do. Take a nap in Mokuba’s room, maybe. No, Mokuba would be back from headquarters soon with news of the VR tests.

    He was trying to devise a different plan when he sensed someone nearby.

    “What do you want, Alistair?” he asked, wearily turning his head in Alistair’s direction in time to see the latter’s look of quiet concern.

    “Nothing,” Alistair said calmly, taking a seat beside Seto on the floor, close enough that Seto could feel his body heat, but not so close that they were touching.

    Neither of them said anything for a few minutes.

    “I told you not to spy on me,” Seto said finally, his tone more matter-of-fact than angry.

    “I know,” Alistair replied, gently drawing semi-circles in the carpet with the heel of his foot. “I figured you didn’t mean that.”

    “No, I didn’t,” Seto admitted. 

   They sat in silence until Seto’s cell phone started buzzing.

    “Mokuba, what is it?” he asked, though he assumed something must have gone badly during the tests.

    “Are you finished with your photoshoot?” Mokuba’s tone held a distinctly scornful undertone that Seto didn’t feel up to addressing.

    “Yeah, why? What happened?”

    Mokuba explained that even with the tweaks Seto had suggested, the VR pod still overheated after thirty minutes.

    “I’ll be there in an hour.” Seto got off the phone and reluctantly stood up. “Later,” he told Alistair before disappearing back downstairs.  


	13. The Drawing Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: self harm

  _"I'm where I want to be_

_and who I want to be_

_and doing all I ever said I would_

_And yet I feel I haven't won at all."_

_~Where I Want to Be,_ Chess: The Musical

**The Drawing Room**

     If given a choice, Seto would have sunken into the oblivion of sleep, not driven off to work. But as he pulled off the freeway into downtown and approached the menacing Kaiba Corporation skyscraper, he had to admit that the prospect of solving one of his invention's hardware shortcomings was a welcome distraction.

By the time he'd parked his car and boarded the elevator to the development floor, he felt more or less back to normal, even if the ignomity of the photoshoot remained in the back of his thoughts.

He joined his brother and the hardware development manager in the lab. The VR pod team were scrambling to cool the system back down after what had clearly been another unsuccessful attempt. Largely ignoring the manager's blathering rundown of what had gone wrong, Seto crossed to the computer and quickly took in the stats on the screen.

"It just requires too much energy to keep it running indefinitely while making sure it doesn't overheat," the manager was saying.

"But it  _can_  be done," Seto murmured, thinking of the pods that Noah had developed from the virtual world. He'd initially been jealous of how smoothly his step-brother's system had operated compared with his, and had immediately begun production on his own version after Battle City had ended. His original design had been all well and good, but he hadn't been able to make it feel real as the virtual world had. Eventually, though, he'd succeeded in reproducing the same level of software; now all he had to do was get the hardware to catch up.

"I saw your picture," Mokuba said casually as Seto sat down at the computer to decide the team's next move. "On PictureThis. It already has a ton of likes."

"I don't want to talk about that," Seto replied blandly, his eyes fixed on the screen in front of him. "Anyway, you can go home; I can handle this. Unless you wanted to stay," he added, glancing in Mokuba's direction. "I could use another set of eyes." 

"No, it's ok," Mokuba replied so innocuously Seto wasn't sure what he really felt. "I have a ton of homework."

"How about dinner?" Seto's gaze was trained ahead even though he wasn't absorbing anything he was reading. "I can come home early and we could play something after. We haven't done that in months."

Admittedly, he'd expected that to work. Expected Mokuba to smile and give him a hug-- two things he really needed. But as with the day before, Mokuba defied his expectations.

"No thanks. I have a date with Hillary tonight and then I'm going to stay at a friend's. Maybe some other time. And before you say anything, Saito's coming with me, so it's fine. Anyway, I'm gonna get going; I told Edwin I'd be downstairs five minutes ago. See ya!" Mokuba punched him lightly in the shoulder before leaving the lab.

After his brother had gone, Seto continued to stare at the VR pod design, looking so focused his employees dared not interrupt. But Seto was actually nursing the stab wound Mokuba had inflicted, knowingly or not. He'd thought that blood was thicker than water but evidently, he'd been wrong.

It shouldn't have mattered; it was just one night. He absently flipped to the next page of the design and pretended to scrutinize the headset layout. Or was it? Was this the start of a chronically decaying level of closeness? In a few months time would Mokuba not speak to him at all? Would he be left with nothing but the characters in his virtual world to talk to? Doomed to cut all ties to humanity as Noah and Gozaburo had?

Yugi's head cheerleader had predicted as much years before at Duelist Kingdom.

" _Yugi has a heart, Kaiba!"_ Téa had yelled at him _. "Yugi has us. And what about you, Seto Kaiba? What do you have at the end of the day_?"

Apparently, not much.

* * *

Even after everyone had left, Trudy hadn't let up grumbling about how inconvenient it all had been, and how having had the house cleaned before the event instead of after had been, in her opinion, an 'utter waste.'

"You know, I certainly don't need help making this place presentable to guests, and those cleaners, they're always moving things about," she told Alistair, who'd offered to help her clean up. "But after it's all over, their services would actually be useful!" She gave the surface of the table a forceful wipe of her cleaning rag. "Because they're always so messy, these people, aren't they?" she continued, directing Alistair to sweep a broken swatch of makeup into the trash can he was holding. "Who, for instance, was raised by such animals that they wouldn't think to actually use the coasters r _ight in front of them_  for their glass?"

"Ummm…"

"Oh, I'm not talking about you, dear," she added kindly. "You didn't know. And you use them now, don't you?"

By the time they'd cleaned the dining room to Trudy's standards, Alistair, though he was happy to help, wasn't sure how much longer he could listen to her many complaints.

"And to cap it all, I'm going to have to change the sheets all over again!" she said, preparing to mount the stairs to tidy in Kaiba's bedroom. "Isobel is a sweet girl, and I know she's had a rough day, but you'd think she'd know not to use brand new sheets!"

Alistair had no idea why that might be the case, but wasn't interested enough to ask, instead taking a different tack.

"Hey, Trudy," he began. "Do you have any errands in the city I could run for you? Obviously you're really busy so…"

"Actually," she replied, oblivious to how desperate he was to leave. "That'd be quite nice. I forgot to give George a shopping list when he went out earlier. You really wouldn't mind?"

"Not at all. If you have a backpack I can put them in, I'll head out right now."

"Oh, you know what." She rested the sheets she'd been carrying against her hip as something seemed to occur to her. "You'll have to see if your motorcycle is finished first. I rather lost track…"

"Finished?"

"Did no one tell you? Seto had some mechanic person come here to fix whatever was wrong with it. But it's been a few hours, so maybe it's ready. I really have no idea."

While he was making his way to the kitchen to collect Trudy's shopping list, Alistair was still letting it sink in. Kaiba had not only remembered that his motorcycle had been scratched, but had gone out of his way to have it fixed. Granted, it was months later, and granted, if it had really been bothering him, Alistair would have had it fixed himself, but it was thoughtful in a way he would have thought Kaiba incapable of. Why had he done it? It seemed so out of character for the man Alistair had berated for not thanking his driver. For the man who had claimed that gratitude was shown through paychecks. Was that what the gesture was? Gratitude? For what?

He absently tucked the shopping list Trudy had left on her kitchen table into his back pocket.

When they'd been sitting together on the floor, Alistair had been sorely tempted to ask why Kaiba had wanted him to watch the photo shoot that morning. Kaiba being not indifferent to him having been there but seemingly  _thankful_  for it deepened the mystery, though in a way that made him feel oddly cheerful.

* * *

Kaiba had thought, naively, that working would help him throw off the feelings of worthlessness that had been gradually sinking deeper and deeper into the trenches of his worst thoughts. Design was something he was indisputably talented at and should have therefore lifted his spirits, but it hadn't. Without his brother's support, what did the technological progress really matter? Who did he have to celebrate with--the sycophants trying to slide their way into his good graces? So who cared whether he finished the VR pod if all he got for it was a momentary glimmer of satisfaction from having solved the puzzle? Afterwards he'd just go home to a house full of ghosts.

The dreary line of thinking followed him out to his car and onto the highway.

In a few years, Mokuba may not only have become indifferent to him emotionally, he wouldn't even need him. He'd move out and either go to college or in some other way pursue his own goals. Not that Seto knew what they were, though Mokuba's girlfriend and his new group of friends probably did.

Then again, what use was he to his brother now? He had no advice to give him about anything that didn't revolve around Duel Monsters or programming or business: things Mokuba seemingly cared little about.

The only positive thing about Mokuba pulling away was that it meant he only had to weather a few more years, and then he'd finally be done. Done with Kaiba Corporation. Done with the long hours of tedious emails, of exhausting meetings and boring events, with always worrying that some faceless business rival would emerge and take away the one last pillar of his reputation left standing after his horribly public downfall at Battle City. Done with everyone expecting so much of him. Just, done.

He wished it could be different. He wished that he could make friends and fall in love like Mokuba could, but he'd forfeited his right to those things when he'd chosen to fight so that of the two of them, his brother would be the one to have the opportunity to be normal.

Around him everything seemed to move dizzyingly fast and he found himself pushing harder on the gas pedal, desperate to catch up, his Porsche streaking past and around the other cars on the highway.

Finally, he was pulling into his garage, his headlight's illuminating a wall of tools that hadn't fit in the garden shed, and Trudy and George's Nissan. What the light did not reveal, however, was Alistair's red motorcycle. Had Alistair left too? The thought was enough to get Seto's attention and for a moment, he was able to stop thinking about Mokuba.

No, maybe he hadn't. Maybe the mechanic had found something else wrong with the bike and taken it back to his shop.

Suddenly, Seto found himself clinging to the idea, grasping onto the notion that for whatever reason, Alistair might actually and inexplicably care about him. Why else would he have quietly sat with him earlier that day with such seeming understanding and sympathy?

He gripped the steering wheel. It was a childish hope. Alistair didn't care. How could he? Alistair thought he was just like his stepfather, who Seto was sure no one found sympathetic. Alistair was out partying with his friends.

Finally, he got out of the car, the garage once more swathed in shadows, and entered the house.

Somehow it was even more dejecting that Alistair could do that than that Mokuba could. Alistair had grown up in the middle of a civil war that had claimed his entire family only to spend the rest of his adolescence working for a lunatic who thought he was the second coming of Moses. But even he could apparently move past every horrible thing that had ever happened to and around him. Seto couldn't help being jealous of that, and he hated him for it, but it drew him to Alistair too.

He had decided to go to sleep, but was unsurprised when he overshot his bedroom and ended up standing in front of Alistair's door.

It wasn't hard to picture what he longed to find behind that door. Alistair would be lying on the bed with a book, his cat no doubt skulking nearby. He'd would look up when Seto walked in, but wouldn't say anything because he would know that wasn't what Seto wanted.

He'd go to Alistair and sit beside him as they'd been that morning and he would lay across Alistair's lap, not caring that it was weak, not to mention childish; it would be worth it to finally be touched by someone that didn't make him feel cold. 

Tomorrow, they would both pretend it had never happened, and Alistair would know better than to ever bring it up. But now, tonight, Seto needed it.

He reached out to open the door for real, but as his hand slid around the curve of the handle, he hesitated.

The Alistair in his imagination had given him what he wanted without question, but what if the real Alistair laughed at him? Rejected him outright? Or what if, as his missing motorcycle suggested, he wasn't there at all?

In a moment of nervous impatience, he finally opened the door.

The beam of light from the hallway cut across the bed. Alistair's cat meowed before laying its head back on its paws and staring at Seto with suspicious yellow eyes. Disappointment lapped at his heels, but he managed to stay ahead of it a moment longer. Alistair could have gone to the library downstairs, could be with Trudy in the kitchen, out for a moonlit stroll in the garden-- any number of things.

It wasn't any of those things though, he knew. This time, his imagination showed him Alistair lying in bed, not with him, but with some college student vaguely reminiscent of Wheeler. And Alistair would be sighing in pleasure, his hands threaded into this other person's hair as they kissed along his neck. And then…

Seto slammed his palm angrily against the wall.

The cat yowled and dove off the bed.

The cold wood of the wall paneling seemed to absorb not only his disappointment and jealousy, but everything else too.

Had he really expected Alistair to be there waiting for him? How naive. And even if he had been, he wouldn't have given him what he wanted. And even if he had, it wouldn't have been worth having to wonder if Alistair would eventually use it against him.

Seto turned away from the door and walked back down the hallway. He knew what he was about to do was stupid and that he'd regret it immediately afterwards, but it was comforting and he needed it.

Dreamlike, the world before him melted from one location to another until he was standing in the entrance to the drawing room.

Habitually, he flicked the light on. He thought briefly about turning it back off, but it was too much effort. Besides, who would notice? Mokuba was with his friends, Trudy was likely asleep with her husband, and Alistair was off in the city, curled around some faceless stranger.

The drawing room was a lifeless space, largely untouched since Gozaburo's death almost seven years past. An unused grand piano was set artfully off to the side and stiff black couches had been grouped around a sharp black coffee table before an empty black grate.

Only two personal effects indicated it was anything but a depressing showroom. Above the mantelpiece hung a large wedding portrait of Gozaburo and his wife, Asami. Even on her wedding day, Asami's smile seemed strained, possibly due to the grip her husband had on her waist, so forceful, his fingers had sunken deep into the fabric of her dress. Gozaburo's own smile was one more of triumph than of happiness.

It was such a hideous photograph, Seto had never understood why his step-father had displayed it. It only remained all these years later because Seto so seldom came to that part of the house it almost never occurred to him to tell Trudy to have it taken down.

On the opposite wall hung an object that made him feel none of the revulsion of the portrait. It was a violin, finely carved, but with the small scratches and dings of frequent use. Before Gozaburo, before the orphanage, before his aunt and uncle had stolen his inheritance, and even before Mokuba had been born, the violin had produced beautiful music under his mother's practiced fingers. The memories were hazy and blurred like reflections in choppy water, but if he concentrated, Seto could remember her sitting in their living room on a green sofa, tuning the strings. He couldn't actually picture her playing, but he could remember her metronome swinging steadily back and forth.

He approached the instrument, gently running his fingertips across the smooth surface before carefully taking it down so he could bring it to his nose and inhale the nostalgic scent of rosin and wood. He closed his eyes, the violin still flush against his face. His parents would weep if they could see what had become of their son.  _But I had to. I have to_ , he thought.  _For Mokuba. It was never about me_.

Reluctantly, he propped the violin back up against the wall before going to sit heavily on one of the sofas. Just as the smell of rosin had been embedded into the violin, the stench of cigar smoke clung to the leather. Seto ignored it, and stared grimly at the coffee table drawer. The drawer was like a time capsule, filled with a yellowed newspaper, a rumpled copy of Forbes magazine, and several sheafs of his stepfather's notes and business cards. Nestled amongst the papers was a pen knife and a small sharpening stone. Unlike the other items, Gozaburo had not placed them there, though at one time, they had belonged to him.

When the cleaners had come to empty Gozaburo's closet, Seto had impulsively taken them and placed them in the drawing room. It had seemed logical. He'd always used it before, so if he ever had need again, it made sense that it be that knife. And twice, he had needed it. Once, after having failed to save Mokuba from Pegasus, instead having his brother rescued by Yugi. Most recently, he'd needed it after his defeat at Battle City, fresh from his encounter with Gozaburo's ghost, and still burning with shame at once again having Yugi step in and save Mokuba.

Now though, he felt no shame when he pulled the knife into his hand because for once, his pilgrimage to this room wasn't about failure or fear or pain. It was about nothing.

He was nothing. He wasn't the top-ranked duelist anymore, the company he'd fought so hard to win had slid down so far it had been reduced to sleazy advertising to maintain forward momentum, and his brother, the one he'd done it all for, resented him for it. Would Mokuba even appreciate that Seto had finally made good on his promise to open KaibaLand, or would jealousy cloud his ability to focus on anything but what it had taken to get there?

Seto pushed his sleeve up and flicked the knife open, the blade reflecting his own tired face. He doubted it needed to be sharpened. Instead, he trailed it contemplatively along his palm. The cold metal against the skin of his wrist caused goosebumps to rise on his arms. He traced each scar with the tip of the blade before setting it vertically on the vein running lengthwise up his arm.

It wouldn't be easy, he knew, perhaps not even possible to do with this knife. He'd end up in the hospital which would be worse. He re-positioned the blade horizontally on his wrist, noting that with this cut he'd have run out of space almost to his forearm.

The initial sting of slicing into his skin was accompanied by the first drop of blood blooming against the metal before flowing up the blade to break against his hand.

The sound of someone calling his name ripped into his tunnel vision and startled him so badly he dropped the knife. It landed heavily on the carpet with a soft thud. He locked eyes with Alistair, whose horrified shock was surely mirrored on his own face.

* * *

Alistair had arrived back at the estate much later than he'd intended. The repairs to his motorcycle had taken longer to complete than expected, and by the time he'd gotten to the city and finished Trudy's shopping, he'd realized that rush hour traffic would absurdly stretch out the already hour-long commute. Deciding that at that point he'd be better off staying in town for dinner, he'd called Trudy in defeat. Luckily, nothing he'd bought was perishable, so he'd gone to the library to pick up new books before eating a leisurely meal at a local pizzeria.

When he finally made it back, he'd been surprised to see Kaiba's red Porsche already in the garage.

Trudy had retired for the evening, so he'd put away the groceries, realizing only as he found himself straightening up the the spice rack that he was dragging his feet going upstairs. Thanks of some kind were in order for having gotten his bike fixed, but Kaiba had been in such a strange mood that day that Alistair was reluctant to seek him out.

Unexpectedly, Sewell greeted him at the top of the stairs.

"How'd you get out?" he asked her curiously, reaching down to scratch behind her ears. Looking past her down the hall, he could see that his door had been left open, though he was certain he'd closed it. He assumed Trudy must have accidentally left it ajar when she'd come to change the bed sheets or something, and thought no more of it.

Herding Sewell back into the room turned out to be harder than he'd expected. She seemed to sense that her freedom was about to be encroached upon because she leapt over his outstretched arms and ran towards Mokuba's room across the interior balcony.

"Sewell," he hissed. "Come here!"

Even though his demand that the cat stay sequestered in Alistair's room was wholly senseless, it was Kaiba's house and like it or not, Alistair was forced to play by his rules or risk getting Sewell kicked out altogether.

Sewell, of course, didn't understand the stakes and chose instead to enjoy the as of late rare opportunity to roam around. Alistair soon realized that far from sensing his urgency, she thought of him chasing her as a game. No sooner would he get within arm's reach then she'd dart around him and bound off in the opposite direction. Finally, though, he cornered her between the balustrade and the wall.

"Gotcha," he whispered triumphantly, reaching down to grab her, but she was just slippery enough that the only part of her he got a strong hold on was her tail. She screeched and he immediately let her go only to groan as she disappeared down the left wing stairs. He quickly chased after her, trying to recall if there was a room nearby he could trap her in long enough to catch her. If she went into the ballroom he'd be forced to wait her out. Similarly, the drawing room didn't have any doors. He thought there might be a guest room or a bathroom, though.

He was distracted from his plan when, upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, he saw that the light in the drawing room was on.

_Who…?_

His question was answered almost immediately. One more, much more careful, step forward revealed Kaiba sitting on the couch, staring intently at something on his wrist. In his right hand he held a small penknife.

The shocking realization hit him like an unexpected wave of water. He froze in place as Sewell snuck behind him and back up the stairs.

"Kaiba," he murmured, momentarily unable to raise his voice above a whisper. "Kaiba!" he tried again.

Kaiba jumped and dropped the knife.

Adrenaline forced Seto to his feet even as he felt his entire body trembling and nausea twisted his stomach.

"What are you doing here?" Seto demanded, hastily yanking his sleeve down and wishing he could trade his panic in for anger more quickly. Alistair had seen. No one was supposed to know! He was supposed to have been alone!

"I...I just…," Alistair stammered. "I wasn't trying to…" He steadied himself against the doorway. "But Kaiba, you shouldn't- ."

"Shouldn't what?" Seto snapped, anger flaring up at last. "Whatever you think you saw, whatever you think you know, you don't know anything! And it's none of your business so just- ." He stopped himself short of saying 'go away' because once he left, Alistair would be free to come to his own conclusions and that couldn't be allowed. "What are you doing here?" he repeated, crossing his arms.

"I was looking for you," Alistair said, choosing under the circumstances to avoid mentioning his cat. And it wasn't even completely untrue.

"Well?" Seto prompted him, narrowing his eyes in a show that he was far more under control than was remotely true. His heart was racing painfully quickly and he had to ball his hands into finsts to keep them steady, but Alistair need not know that. "I assume you were looking for me because you want something, so what is it?" He found that he was crossing the room, though he didn't remember deciding to do so, his humiliation-fueled wrath forcing him into action. "Do you want more money?" he fumbled in his back pocket for his wallet. "Take it." He threw it forcibly against Alistair's chest.

Alistair winced as Kaiba's wallet bounced off of him and landed at his feet, but he was still unable to move, leaving him to stare in shocked astonishment into Kaiba's face, warped into a feral expression that failed to completely hide the fear that lay behind it.

"I don't want-," he started, but Kaiba cut him off.

"Then what? Do you want sex? I'd have thought you'd be satisfied by now, or did your plans fall through? Or after spying on me today did you think you'd one-up all those women by having me yourself?"

"I...my plans?"

But Seto wasn't listening. "Because let me tell you something, Alistair: I'm not going to be 'had' by anyone, do I make myself clear? Those women may think that that picture entitles them to me, and  _you_  might think that those few incidents between us entitles you to me, but they don't!" He forcibly jabbed his thumb against his own chest. "I belong to me, and that's it! You can have a roof over your head at my expense, and you can get your pilot's license at my expense, but that's all you get. And in return you're going to get out of my life forever.  _That's_  the agreement we have. Understood?"

"Ok, but- ."

"So you are going to go back upstairs and forget about what you think you saw or I swear--!"

"I got it," Alistair said softly, the murderous glint mingled with the fear in Kaiba's eyes frightening him enough that he finally took a step backwards."But the reason I was looking for you was because I wanted to thank you for getting my bike fixed, that's all."

Seto's instinct was to scoff at such a notion. But the part of him that had warmed when Alistair had sat beside him in the hallway chose to believe that what Alistair said, that the sincerity in those grey eyes was genuine. It was almost more painful.  _Like the Grinch's heart growing three sizes_ , he thought absurdly before he could stop himself.

"Yeah, well, it looks cheap riding around on a damaged motorcycle like you were," he replied finally, relieved to hear that he was able to use even a brittle imitation of his usual cold nonchalance.

There was a long silence before Alistair dared to venture a comment, each word chosen very carefully.

"I promise I won't say anything about...this. And I won't pretend to understand, because I don't, but I'm sorry you feel like it's what you need to do. But if it's about this morning, they definitely aren't worth this. Not that it's any of my business, like you said," he added quickly. "Anyway." He backed further into the hallway. "I'm...I'm gonna go. And you…," he forced himself to look into Kaiba's face instead of slightly over his shoulder. "Take care of yourself."

Seto watched as Alistair tripped his way back upstairs, and heard the annoying meowing of his cat. Only once Alistair's footsteps had trailed off did Seto move again, first retrieving his wallet and stuffing it back in his pocket, then sitting down heavily on the couch and allowing himself to breathe out some of the tension straining his muscles. Finally, he reached down to pick up the knife, its open blade now reflecting the ceiling, and thought about what Alistair had said.

Was he really as sympathetic as he'd seemed? It was possible he really had just wanted to thank him for the motorcycle, gratitude being well within the DOMA member's code of honor. And Alistair, unlike Yugi or any of his brainless friends, actually understood what fear was. What loss was. But Alistair had also been known to sit on a moral high horse. Was he even now sneering at how poor little rich kid Seto Kaiba was sad about having to get his picture taken? However, since making his 'did daddy not get you the right colored pony' comment when he'd first arrived at the house, Alistair had made no such follow-up insults, so maybe he had realized that that wasn't who he was.

Seto flicked the knife blade shut. He knew that in the grand scheme of life, what one insignificant person thought of him was irrelevant. But it would require him to lack all semblance of self-awareness to say that Alistair was just another bitter cynic.

He set the knife back in the drawer and clasped his wrist. Though his sleeve hid the scars, he imagined he could feel them. Had seeing him like this made Alistair think about him differently? Did it make him view him as piteous and weak? Most likely. Was that better than ruthless and cold? He wasn't sure. He wasn't even sure how exactly he wanted Alistair to see him, and was fearful of what it meant that he cared. He squeezed his wrist tighter, grimacing as the added pressure caused the fabric of his shirt to rub painfully into his newest cut.

* * *

Alistair paced around his room. It went against everything he'd thought he'd known about Kaiba to see him like that. After that morning, should he have known? Could he have prevented this? Had he done enough? Should he have stayed? Should he tell Mokuba? Trudy?

After his fourth lap, Alistair collapsed onto his bed. Sewell, tired by her outing, was already asleep on the pillow, but stirred briefly when he lay down beside her.

He had promised Kaiba not to reveal what he'd seen, but wasn't it his moral obligation? Granted, telling Mokuba would do nothing but upset him since the fifteen year old could hardly be expected to intervene. Telling Trudy would have made sense if she weren't on Kaibas payroll. Kaiba seemed to accept her mothering, but she had no real authority over him, and when she inevitably confronted him about it, he'd likely fire her to get her off his back, and it would be an ugly situation that would help no one. And Kaiba likely hadn't been aiming to actually kill himself, and was therefore in no immediate danger. Then again, Kaiba had never seemed to place a particularly high value on his life.

At Duelist Kingdom, he'd threatened to jump to his death off the top of the castle if Yugi didn't throw the duel. It was the first and only time while working for Dartz that Alistair's hatred of Kaiba had faltered.

Yugi's friends had seemed to think that Kaiba's motivation had been obsessive pride, but Alistair had known it was about Mokuba. Kaiba had needed to win in order to follow Pegasus' twisted instructions for how to get his brother back. Alistair would have done the same for Mikey; he assumed any older sibling would have, and so he had understood.

Still, in retrospect, that had been only one of many times Kaiba had risked his life, even when the stakes had been much lower. Kaiba had always seemed so cocky, though, so sure of himself, that it seemed upside down for him to be depressed.

_And what about_? Alistair wondered, tapping his foot against the mattress. He'd lost his family, it was true, but Alistair couldn't see how that would connect to the photo shoot from that morning. 

He rolled over and stared vacantly at the bedside table.

What puzzled him even more than anything was why Kaiba had wanted him to observe what a struggle it had been for him to do it. It had made him wonder if maybe Kaiba was coming to think of him as someone he could relax around, and he'd liked the implication. Now though, he wasn't sure what it had meant.

Returning to lying on his back, Alistair realized he was fixating on the wrong point, and tried to refocus.

Since he couldn't tell anyone, did that mean it was up to him? Trying to stop Kaiba from doing what he wanted was a daunting task. And who was he to do anything? Hadn't working for Dartz just been a structured means of flirting with suicide? Make the world a better place or die trying? Even after it had all been over, he'd considered throwing himself out of Kaiba's jet on the way back to Domino. He'd thought at the time that he'd been serious, but now he could see what a waste of his life that would have been in a world that had never been as black and white as Dartz had made it seem.

Then again, for all that he'd been suckered into that simplistic view of the world, he'd never really taken it to heart the way Raphael and Dartz himself seemingly had. Not really. DOMA had been a band-aid more than anything else, and his hatred of the Kaiba family a distraction from the pain of what lay beneath. It was pain he knew he needed to confront if he wanted to be able to sleep soundly, but he was so relieved to finally have a break from the strain of salving it with anger only to feel it pulsing dulling underneath. His life as it was now was so blissfully mundane he was as of yet unwilling to go through the agony of drowning in the sorrow of everything he'd lost in order to finally cleanse his soul of it.

Is that what had happened to Kaiba?

What  _had_  happened to Kaiba?

Out of a sudden morbid curiosity, he reached for his phone and with a moment's hesitation, pulled up Kaiba's PictureThis profile.

In just a day, the picture had garnered a staggering amount of traffic, and looking at it, it was easy to see why.

The image revealed none of the angst and discomfort Alistair knew Kaiba had really been feeling. In fact, it was such a convincing performance that Alistair wondered if even those that had been there had known how he'd really felt. That cocky smirk only Kaiba had ever been able to pull off was stretched predictably across his face. It was a look with one interpretation: 'you wish you could be me, but you and I both know you never will.'

A single drop of water poised to fall clung to a lock of hair hanging just over his bare shoulder where another had been frozen running down his chiseled torso. His soaked shirt clung attractively to every muscle of his lean frame such that Alistair doubted anyone would stop to question why he'd worn a dress shirt into the pool behind him as the caption implied. By all accounts it was everything that Alistair was sure the photographer had been aiming for: it oozed sex and confidence and opulence while promising nothing.

It didn't really look like Kaiba. Sure, that was his Duel Monsters card necklace, and his monogrammed belt buckle, and even his face, but Seto Kaiba wasn't sexy. That is, he was sexy because he had never tried to be. This was hot in a very desperate sort of way that helped Alistair understand why Kaiba had hated it. But desperate or not, it had hit its mark.

Still staring at the picture, Alistair couldn't understand, now even less than before, why Kaiba would have agreed to this. He'd never shied away from shutting down ideas he didn't like in the past. Alistair had seen him telling Tanaka in particular many times that he wanted nothing to do with social media. What had changed? It almost seemed as though Kaiba no longer cared. But that wasn't true, or he wouldn't be cutting himself. So what was it?

Even though it caused him to brush up uncomfortably against the feelings he was trying to ignore, Alistair contemplated what it was that he'd really wanted when he'd been at his lowest. When he hadn't cared what happened to him anymore.

It had been after Valon had started courting Mai Valentine. He had never liked Valon, so it shouldn't have mattered, but he'd felt betrayed. He and Raphael and Valon were supposed to have been united by their mutual loneliness. Of course, neither of them had actually been alone all that time, slipping off on occasion  to pretend that one night stands were as good as a real companion, but he hadn't begrudged them that because he'd known that they knew it wasn't really real. Mai had been real, though. Or at least, Valon had wanted her to be. And that, Alistair  _had_  taken umbrage at. Perhaps for Kaiba it was the same, though he had reacted with sadness rather than anger. And it would explain why he had seemed so insecure around Mokuba's girlfriend.

Alistair set his phone aside, the bed dipping slightly as he sat up. He gazed vacantly at his reflection in the french door windows. Was it possible that a solution to Kaiba's problem could benefit them both? 


	14. Swimming Lessons

_"Life is like a swimming pool. You dive into the water, but you can't see how deep it is."_

 ~Dennis Rodman in a Facebook post

  **Swimming Lessons**

 

He knew it was a risky idea, but having spent half the night working and reworking what he should do, Alistair could think of nothing better. And when he'd imagined it, it had gone well enough. He just had to hope that Kaiba understood.

It had been quite awhile since he'd invited himself to Kaiba's 7am breakfast, and he wasn't even sure Kaiba would come, but it had seemed like the best opportunity to track him down. And plus, Alistair was afraid if he didn't get it over with as soon as possible he wouldn't do it at all.

"Don't you two get to arguing," Trudy had warned him as she placed the Domino Times on the table next to Kaiba's pot of coffee and the silverware.

"It's too early to argue," he'd pointed out with a yawn.

"Why on earth are you even up?"

"I need to talk to Kaiba about logging some more flight hours before the graduation thing in November," he explained, his lie punctuated by another yawn.

"Ah. Well, mind how you bring it up. Seto's not at his best in the morning," she advised him, already halfway back to the door.

Alistair would have pointed out that Kaiba wasn't at his best most of the time, but his memories of the night before stopped him.

If Kaiba was surprised to see Alistair sitting there waiting for him when he entered the dining room, he didn't show it. He looked as tired as Alistair felt, his eyes slightly bloodshot, and Alistair wondered if he'd slept at all, or if he'd restlessly lain awake long into the night as he had.

They both knew it would take Trudy some time to come back with the actual food, so they were left to face each other across the empty table.  Seto would have reached for the newspaper, but he was warily curious to know what Alistair planned to say. Would he dare reference what he'd seen when Seto had explicitly told him not to?

"Good morning," Alistair ventured tentatively.

Seto nodded curtly in response.

When it became clear Kaiba planned to sip his coffee in stony silence, Alistair had no choice but to broach the subject without preamble.

"I know you're really busy," he began, resisting the urge to fiddle with his silverware. "But I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me with something."

Kaiba looked at him with calculating interest.

"You're a really good swimmer and before I leave, I was kind of hoping that maybe you could teach me." As he spoke he felt his face growing hot.

"You can't swim?" Kaiba asked with more skepticism than surprise, which only made Alistair blush harder.

"I'm from the desert," he reminded Kaiba defensively.

"Maybe, but wasn't Dartz's headquarters on an underwater island?"

"That doesn't mean I'd know how to swim," Alistair pointed out snippily. In his imaginary version of this conversation, Kaiba had made a snarky comment and then agreed; he hadn't interrogated him about it. "It's not like being a strong swimmer would have helped me survive if there had been a flood or something; we were like, seventy meters underwater!"

"Why the sudden interest then?" Seto asked, careful to sound as bored as possible. He had an inkling, but after the way Alistair had seen him the night before, he thought it was only fair to take advantage of his guest's mild embarrassment, though he was feeling too cautiously hopeful to push him too far.

"I just, I realized the other day that I don't know how, and since you have a pool I thought I'd ask." This time Alistair did give in and began flipping his fork back and forth in his hands. "So…"

Seto hadn't thought Alistair capable of the level of discretion this required. It raised his respect for him a degree. "I'm not a lifeguard," he said flatly. "So if you drown, it's your own problem."

Their conversation was briefly interrupted when Trudy came in to set omelettes in front of each of them, the smell of melted cheese and chives too tantalizing for either of them to ignore, and Alistair just managed to thank her before taking a large bite.

"Yes, thank you," Seto heard himself echo.

"Oh, it's no trouble at all," she replied modestly even as she beamed at the rare words of appreciation.

As she walked away, Seto's gaze flitted to Alistair, who he was pleased to see was smiling softly down at his plate.

Alistair's smile was almost enough to allow Seto to overcome his exhaustion as he got into his car. Mounting evidence suggested that Alistair at the very least genuinely didn't hate him anymore, but only time would tell what it was he felt instead. He'd been surprisingly easy to talk to as well. When he'd seen him sitting at the table, Seto had had half a mind to skip breakfast and drive straight to work, too ashamed to face Alistair again, but in retrospect, he was glad he hadn't.

Not wishing to spoil his unexpectedly good mood, but unable to ignore it any longer, Seto reluctantly unlocked his phone to see what had become of Tanaka's brain child.

It was an excruciatingly embarrassing picture, and he could scarcely stand to look at it. He was also disappointed to see that Tanaka's prediction had been correct. He'd even had the audacity to gloatingly forward Seto an article from the trashier digital copy of the Domino Times: 'Seto Kaiba's Shirtless Selfie Breaks the Internet.' He rolled his eyes. What a stupid expression, though not as idiotic as the idea that it was newsworthy. What a joke. Still, he hated the fact that in essence, he was the punchline. Yet still he might have managed to salvage the day had it not been for a four word email from Pegasus: 'My,my, Kaiba Boy.' The very thought of Pegasus seeing that picture was too much.

Seto brought his fist down hard on the horn. The blaring shock of it against the quiet of the morning was as satisfying as he could have hoped for. Finally, he sat up straight in his seat, closed his eyes, and breathed out angrily. Only then was he able to calmly pull out of the garage and drive to work.

* * *

Though it initially startled her enough to spill some of her tea onto the table in front of her, Trudy quickly realized what the sound was. Sighing, she shook her head. She hoped eventually Seto would grow out of handling his anger that way.

* * *

By the time he arrived at his office, Seto was finally ready to handle Tanaka, who had wasted no time scheduling an appointment, and instead taken it upon himself to wait outside his boss's door.

"He insisted on seeing you," Valerie explained at the same time that the PR manager swiftly got up from the couch in the front office of the executive suite.

"Good morning, sir," Tanaka began, all obsequious smiles and humble bows. It made Seto want to knock him over the head with the decorative vase on Valerie's desk.

"What makes you think I want to see you?" Seto asked disdainfully. "Our business together is finished." He made to move past him, but Tanaka chose to stand in his way. Seto narrowed his eyes dangerously.

"But sir, if you recall, our agreement stated- ."

"I'm aware of what I signed," Seto interrupted. "And as I  _recall_ , there was nothing in our contract that stipulated you could come up here and bother me without an appointment." As he stared down his employee, whose clenched jaw revealed ill-concealed anger, Seto could see how right Alistair had been. Tanaka wasn't worth the bandaged cut hidden beneath his bracer. He'd make sure not to forget again.

His commute had resulted in a fledgling idea that would remind anyone who had come to doubt him why he was the one in charge and that he was smart enough to take advantage of Tanaka's cheap idea, but was by no means reliant on it.

"But since you're already here," he continued just as Tanaka looked to be on the verge of leaving. "I may as well ask you in person."

Looking mollified, Tanaka took a step back and pushed his fashionably thick glasses slightly higher on his nose. "Of course."

"I have a meeting later today with Roland and Kobayashi to discuss the logistics of hosting a Duel Monsters tournament in lieu of an opening ceremony for KaibaLand. As the manager of PR, you are, of course, also welcome to attend. Valarie can give you the details, but until then I'm very busy, and any other concerns will have to wait." With relish, Seto stepped around him and into the sanctuary of his office, closing the door with satisfaction in Tanaka's face.

Riding out the emotional momentum, Seto eased into his desk chair and called his brother.

* * *

 

Mokuba had just been contemplating whether or not to get out of bed when his phone started buzzing loudly against his bedside table. Reluctantly, he folded back his comforter, sat up, yawned, and finally picked up the phone. He wondered what Seto could want of him so early in the morning.

"What's up?" he asked, his voice still raspy with sleep.

"There's a meeting today I'd like you to be at," came his brother's reply and Mokuba wished he'd ignored the call. Of course. Business. It was always about business with Seto.

"I can't, I have a math test," he said with only a trace of guilt. It was true he had a math test scheduled for that day, but he'd never thought he'd prefer calculus to spending time with Seto.

"That can be rescheduled," Seto pointed out.

"Look, I just don't feel like going to some boring meeting about stocks or investments or whatever," Mokuba admitted. "I can barely understand it anyway."

"That just means your teacher isn't doing their job, because you  _should_  be able to understand basic things like that, but that's beside the point because this meeting is about something you might be interested in."

The unexpected undertone of excitement in Seto's voice, like he was on the verge of revealing a surprise, caught Mokuba off-guard. "What?" he asked curiously, his annoyance dissipating.

Seto heard the shift in Mokuba's tone and couldn't help but smile broadly. "How would you feel about throwing another tournament?"

* * *

By the end of the day, Seto was feeling far more in control than he'd felt in months. This was typical of the day after one of his drawing room visits, but today in particular, he could feel his old enthusiasm for his job returning. And not a moment too soon; with stock prices on the rise but still too low for CFO Hinata Kobayashi's taste, Seto had been feeling the pressure to start making easy money, and a tournament was by far the best way to do so. And even though he hated to admit it, Tanaka hadn't been wrong about social media buzz helping boost sales, in this case, the sale of tournament tickets.

But perhaps most importantly, he'd won Mokuba back over.  _And without any help from Yugi_ , he thought smugly.

It really had been like old times, he reflected after everyone had gone, leaving him to lean back in his chair alone. Mokuba at his side as he'd laid out his proposal, his brother's enthusiastic confidence enough to tip opinion in his favor. It had been an open and shut deal, all things considered. Battle City had been the most lucrative tournament ever thrown, which, considering it was also the most expensive tournament ever thrown, was an accomplishment his CFO couldn't ignore.

He'd prepared himself for the one concession he'd known he would have to make so that when Kobayashi advised him to reach out to Industrial Illusions to ask them to co-sponsor, he had agreed without complaint. If working with Pegasus one more time was what it took to finally be able to get out from under him once and for all, Seto was in favor of getting it over with.

With Kobayashi's approval, Seto had tasked Roland with compiling a list of the Duel Monsters national champions so individual contracts could be drawn up and invitations sent out.

"Sir," Tanaka had interjected the moment Kobayashi and Roland were gone. "As always, your tournament conception is quite a good one, but I do have just one question, if I may."

Seto exchanged a brief look with Mokuba. "Yes, what is it? And make it quick."

"Well, seeing as you're calling this the Grand Championship Tournament, shouldn't the grand champion be competing?"

Mokuba had raised his eyebrows at Tanaka's gall. Bringing up Seto's number two world ranking put anyone on thin ice. To his surprise, Seto had responded calmly that he had every intention of inviting Yugi to the tournament, though not as a competitor.

"Everyone will be competing for a chance to duel against the 'King of Games,' he explained. "That's the prize."

"Doesn't that jeopardize your ranking?" Tanaka had pressed and Mokuba had to wonder if the PR manager was goading Seto on purpose.

"Of course not," Mokuba had interjected with confident derision. "No one can defeat Yugi but Seto."

"Perhaps," Tanaka went on, looking slightly apprehensive which had put Seto far more on edge than any of the man's pomosity ever had. Tanaka only got really nervous when he had to deliver news neither of them would like. "But, sir, I must advise you not to compete in this tournament. It's too important to the future success of this company. If you were to lose," and here the word 'again' hung heavily in the air, "it could be disastrous."

"Oh please," Mokuba had quipped. "Seto wouldn't lose. Battle City doesn't count. Not with all that other crazy stuff that was going on!"

"Be that as it may," Tanaka continued regretfully, looking at his boss across the desk with rare gravity. "I would be remiss if I didn't offer my opinion on the matter."

"Disastrous in what way?" Seto had asked.

"I told you before that our brand rests on your image. One loss develops a rivalry, which is good. A back and forth between two equally talented duelists gives people something to talk about. But two consecutive losses starts to look like a pattern. If you were to compete again and lose..." He paused and ran a hand through his thinning hair. "I'd have to advise you to step aside and make Yugi Mutou the new face of Kaiba Corporation."

To Mokuba's shock and dismay, Seto had given a curt nod of understanding.

"You're not actually considering not competing, are you?" Mokuba demanded as soon as Tanaka had gone.

"It's not what I'd prefer," Seto acknowledged, not able to meet his brother's eyes and instead straightening a stack of papers on his desk. "But it's necessary."

"But why?" Mokuba asked, sounding almost betrayed.

Despite his own feelings of regret, Seto couldn't help but suppress a smile."Because Tanaka's right. It's more important that this tournament succeed than that I get to duel Yugi again."

Mokuba shook his head. "Maybe, but when you won, wouldn't that make us look even more successful?"

The shadow of a smile disappeared. "That's the thing, Mokuba. I don't think I  _can_  defeat Yugi." As hard as it was to admit, it was harder to see his brother's disappointment.

"You're the best there is," Mokuba balked. "Don't give up!"

Seto grimaced. "I'm not 'giving up,' I'm just being realistic."

Mokuba actually got off the couch and shook his brother by the shoulders. "What are you talking about? That last time you and Yugi dueled you nearly had him beat! If that Anubis guy hadn't shown up, you would have won!"

"That's my point," Seto explained, gently removing Mokuba's hands from his shoulders. "Something always happens to interfere with my victory. What's the point of wasting my time developing a strategy I won't even get to play out? I'd rather put my energy into the success of KaibaLand. Isn't that the point of all this?"

When Mokuba fell silent, Seto knew he was thinking back to that day, all those years ago, when they'd first dreamed of opening a theme park. A dream that at the time had seemed impossible to ever achieve.

"Anyway," Seto went on with a much lighter tone. "I have something important I need you to do."

He'd explained that Yugi and his friends were still in California, having seemingly chosen to spend their summer vacationing with Professor Hawkins and his insufferable daughter.

"I want you to go pick them up so that can personally invite Yugi be our special guest and to duel the winner of Grand Championship. Obviously he'd be well-compensated, but if we don't also invite the mutt, I doubt he'll agree to come. So at the risk of cheapening our line-up, go ahead and issue Wheeler an invite too."

"Sure thing, but this tournament isn't going to happen for months, why do all that now?"

Seto smirked. "Illusion of choice. Tell them we'll fly them back to Domino _if_ Yugi agrees. Because something tells me Wheeler couldn't afford a return flight even if they let him ride with the baggage."

He swiveled his chair to face the window and looked out on the city below. He supposed being essentially barred from his own tournament due to his own incompetence should have upset him more. He was, after all, supposed to be a duelist before anything else, ready to jump into battle to defend his honor against any opponent. But what he'd told Mokuba was a truth he'd been forced to face after the events surrounding the destruction of his duel dome. Yugi was the only person he had any interest in dueling anymore, but beating him seemed increasingly impossible. Seto doubted very much that it was fate standing in his way as the Ishtar woman had told him at Battle City. But there was  _something_. Some quality that always allowed Yugi to rise from what should have been the ashes of defeat so that in the end it was he who ended up on his knees in disgrace.

It was a ridiculous notion that one of Dartz's random henchmen had been a more talented duelist than he was, let alone more talented than Yugi, so Yugi's loss at his hand must have been the result of some outside factor he was unaware of. No, Yugi was the King of Games, even if Seto resented the title. But he wasn't ready to retire just yet. He'd sit this tournament out, but after that, after KaibaLand was up and running and he had room to breathe, then perhaps he'd try one more time to topple the king.

In the meantime, he had an event to plan and a theme park to open. With so much to do there was no time for musing about his Duel Monsters title, or anything else. Later perhaps…

* * *

By dinnertime, Alistair was feeling discouraged after an afternoon of unsuccessful online job hunting. Finding businesses that were hiring had been relatively easy. He didn't even mind that most of them were service jobs at fast food restaurants-- he was hardly too proud to making a living flipping burgers. But every single application required that he input his social security number, which of course, he didn't have. It was this roadblock that had led him to the realization that the closest thing he had to an ID of any kind was his library card. Any official documents he'd had, had been lost or destroyed years ago. The more the box he couldn't fill in plagued his job hunt, the more panic he'd felt. How could he hope to move on with his life if he didn't even officially exist?

His initial thought had been to ask Kaiba if he could, through his probable connections and influence, get a social security card made for him. But he hated how helpless that would be, no better than a child running to his parents so they could solve his problems for him. So he'd cast around for a different way. A simple search had revealed how straightforward the process of replacing lost or stolen documents was, but not only was it a cycle of needing one document to replace another, he wasn't from Domino so it didn't apply to him anyway. He'd briefly considered trying to forge something himself, but although he was confident he would be able to design passable documents, he didn't have the ability to create anything that would hold up against even mild scrutiny.

A final burst of research led him to the possibility of seeking asylum. It would be a lengthy process, but legally, it was what he assumed he was supposed to do. He wouldn't be able to work while his application was processed and would likely be constricted to government housing while he waited, but the situation across the border certainly checked all the boxes. And if his application was rejected and he was deported, well, then perhaps his fate didn't lie in Domino after all.

He turned off his phone and set it alongside his pile of notes on the coffee table before leaning back on the couch. This prompted Sewell to abandon the bed and instead settle squarely on his chest.

"Hey," he greeted her with an affectionate scratch behind her ears. He wondered suddenly what would happen to her after he left the Kaiba estate. It was doubtful he'd be allowed to take her with him if he were forced into government housing. And Kaiba had made it clear that he disliked her, so without Alistair there, Kaiba would likely toss her back out onto the street. Maybe Trudy could be convinced to offer the cat sanctuary.

Even though as of yet, none of what he was considering was a reality and for the foreseeable future he wasn't going anywhere, he felt a twinge of sadness and, could it be? The stirrings of homesickness. How ironic it was, feeling more at home living with Seto Kaiba than he'd ever felt living on Dartz's island. Of course, Kaiba had said himself that his hospitality extended only until he'd gotten his pilot's license. Then he'd be on his own. 

Sewell continued to purr loudly as Alistair scratched her absently under her chin, wondering if Kaiba really meant to take him up on his request for swimming lessons.

* * *

Seto was feeling comfortably drowsy by the time he made it home that night. It would be doing himself a discourtesy to call it a particularly productive day, as though his work ethic was anything but stellar. But it had been productive in a way that made him feel all his hard work had actually resulted in something to be proud of. His own fervor must have rubbed off on his staff, because by the end of the day, the initial groundwork for Grand Championship was already well underway.

He'd been fully prepared to lazily swim a lap or two and then go straight to bed when he remembered. He was tired, and it was just a ruse anyway, so he would be fully justified if he decided to break his tacit agreement with Alistair, but especially with such a successful day behind him, he was more intrigued than ever to see how Alistair planned to handle the charade.

Stifling a yawn, he made his way upstairs, past his own room, and knocked once on Alistair's door before entering.

Alistair had been hunched over the coffee table reading his notes, Sewell perched haphazardly on his shoulders with her tail in his face when Kaiba stepped into the room. Sewell's ears immediately twitched mistrustfully and she leapt from Alistair's back onto the floor, her back claws digging painfully into his shoulder blade.

"I don't understand why you even bother knocking," Alistair mused in mild annoyance, wincing at the scratch Sewell had inflicted. "If you're just going to walk in anyway."

"It's my house, why should I ask permission?" Kaiba replied with a shrug.

"Um, because you don't know what I could be doing," Alistair explained only to instantly feel a blush creep up his cheeks at his own insinuation.

Kaiba either didn't catch it or chose not to comment, instead reminding Alistair of their loose appointment.

"Meet me at the pool in ten minutes," he said shortly before turning on his heel and abruptly leaving the room again, either passive-aggressively or absentmindedly leaving the door open.

* * *

By night, Alistair was tempted to describe the pool as spooky. Only the underwater lamps and the moonlight shining in through the skylight illuminated the room, casting eerie shifting shadows on the surface of the water and across the tiles. His footsteps echoed hollowly off the walls even as he tread carefully. Suddenly, lights flickered on along the walls and he was forced to squint as Kaiba emerged from the French doors on the far side of the pool. Alistair wasn't sure what he'd expected, but he was nonetheless surprised by the black wet-suit Kaiba had donned in favor of the swim trunks Alistair had seen him in before.

"Were you considering learning how to swim in the dark?" Kaiba asked once he'd joined Alistair at the water's edge.

"Of course not."

They both looked at each other expectantly.

"Are you going to get in?" Kaiba asked, sounding impatient.

"Obviously," Alistair muttered, going to pull his shirt over his head.

The unconcerned, casual manner with which Alistair was able to strip down to his underwear in front of him was a notion Kaiba found totally exotic, and he stared in open fascination as the muscles in Alistair's flat stomach stretched when he put his arms over his head. Couldn't help but notice the way his biceps flexed as he yanked his pants down. Was he doing it on purpose, Seto wondered, his eyes now unconsciously scanning the curve of Alistair's back. He shook himself and quickly looked down at the lip of the pool.

With his clothes now lyng in a messy heap at his feet, Alistair glanced at the steps leading into the electric blue water. It seemed so easy. Just climb down the stairs and then...swim. But the thought of actually being submersed in it, a ceiling of water high above his head, not being able to breathe…

To his horror, Alistair realized he really was afraid. He looked back at Kaiba whose impatience had evolved into exasperation.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, ok, ok!"

With trepidation, Alistair put one foot on the top stair so that he could feel the coolness rising up off of the water just below. Gritting his teeth, he took two steps into the pool, the cold shock of the water around his ankles causing goosebumps to rise on his skin all the way up his arms.

"Why's it so cold?" he asked irritably, delaying the inevitable moment when he'd actually have to submerge himself in it.

"Just get in," he heard Kaiba say gruffly.

Alistair forced himself to walk down the rest of the stairs, the water now coming up to the middle of his thighs. It was heavy for a substance that couldn't hold his weight; he could feel it pushing against him. And it was so incredibly cold. He started to shiver, unconsciously hugging himself in a futile attempt to trap his own body heat.

Seto was completely nonplussed by Alistair's behavior. Intellectually, he could understand why a person who couldn't swim might be scared of being in water over their head, but to be scared seemingly of the water itself was absurd.

"Alistair," he snapped. "Just get in."

"I'm  _trying_!" Alistair snapped back, shooting Kaiba a look over his shoulder. "It's just harder than I thought it'd be, ok? Give me a second. And don't you dare push me!"

"I wasn't planning on it, relax." Alistair was relieved to hear that a degree of annoyance had dropped out of Kaiba's voice. "But you won't warm up until you start moving around you know."

Alistair cautiously ventured further into the pool, the waterline rising too quickly for his liking. As it reached the middle of his chest, he could feel terror twisting his insides. When he sensed the drop-off was mere inches from where he stood, he instinctively tried to retreat, almost falling over backwards when what should have been an easy motion was met with resistance. He caught his balance, adrenaline surging through him. He wanted to tell Kaiba that he'd changed his mind, but his throat was too thick with fear to choke out the words. It was impossible to move ahead, but he was reluctant to go back, afraid he'd fall. And then the water would have him and he'd drown. Had that been Kaiba's plan? He looked back at Kaiba again. He was still standing at the edge of the pool, his arms folded across his chest, his face an impassive mask. No one knew that Kaiba had come with him. It would just look like he'd gone swimming alone in the middle of the night. That his death had been an unfortunate accident.

_Get out of the water, get out of the water, get out of the water!_

In his panic, and already unsteady in the alien environment, he misstepped. One foot landed on the pool's tiled bottom, the other slipped backwards over the edge of the drop-off. He tried to regain his balance, his arms windmilling helplessly in and out of the water, but as though an invisible hand had grabbed hold of his ankle from below, he found himself dragged down. And then it was everywhere, pulsing against his ears, forcing its way into his mouth. He thrashed against it, clawing his hands back above the surface.

It only lasted a few seconds before he managed to blunder his way back above the drop-off, but in those seconds, he'd really thought he was going to die. Then his head broke the surface. He choked as he struggled to take in big, gulping breaths, water streaming down the sides of his mouth, and his chest aching against the pounding of his heart. Only then did he realize Kaiba was no longer standing at the poolside.

Until Alistair’s head had fallen below the surface and he saw him flailing around in the water like a person who legitimately believed they were drowning, Seto hadn’t been sure if he really couldn’t swim or not.

The idea that anyone could drown centimeters from the shallow end of a pool was almost comically pathetic, but nonetheless, Seto jumped in after him, prepared to yank him back to the surface. As it turned out, he needn't have bothered as the moment he hit the water, Alistair found his footing.

"You told me you didn't know how to swim, not that you'd never been in the water before," Seto commented as he approached a spluttering Alistair, still struggling to catch his breath.

Alistair managed to shoot him a reproachful glare. "Shut up," he said, each word punctuated by a cough. "This was a stupid idea," he added once his breathing had evened out. He was shivering again, droplets of cold water from his hair splashing onto his shoulders. He doubted very much that he looked half as attractive as Kaiba had in the same state. And even looking at him now, his dark hair slicked off his face and dewdrops of water clinging to his eyelashes, made Alistair's embarrassment somehow worse.

"No, what was stupid was never having learned to swim in the first place," Kaiba corrected him with condescension. "And not learning now would be even stupider. So pull yourself together so we can get on with this."

What kind of a student Kaiba was, Alistair had no idea, but he was a terrible teacher. He had no patience, and got more frustrated than Alistair did when the latter didn't immediately pick up what he was trying to explain. And then, after almost an hour, when Alistair finally felt he was starting to improve, Kaiba had scorned the achievement.

"You realize what you're doing is called 'doggy-paddling,' right? Is that what you want to look like: a dog playing fetch in the pool?" he jeered with a mocking laugh.

The final vestiges of his self-restraint broke and Alistair shoved a small wave of water in Kaiba's direction, smiling in satisfaction as it hit its mark.

Kaiba stared at him in surprise, coughing lightly as water ran down his face. Alistair snickered with genuine humor when he saw that Kaiba looked more startled than affronted.

In that moment, when he knew he should have felt insulted, Seto thought instead of how he had never imagined anyone other than his brother would ever look at him in such an open, relaxed way. But there was real warmth in Alistair's eyes for the second time that day, and Seto discovered how much he enjoyed having it directed at him. He became aware that they were looking at each other, the smile slowly fading from Alistair's face. It was going to happen if he didn't stop it, and there would be no question of what it meant if he didn't.

"I have to get to bed," Seto heard himself say, his words causing a momentary furrow of disappointment across Alistair's brow. "And you should get out too or you probably really will drown."

With lingering difficulty, Alistair made his way to the side and hauled himself out, relieved when the weight of the water didn't pull his underwear down. He glanced at Kaiba who was already walking towards the changing room, where Alistair knew he wasn't allowed to follow.

"Same time tomorrow?" he asked, hoping he sounded more joking than eager.

"If I feel like it," Seto responded over his shoulder.

Then the two parted ways for the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: I know I'm fudging the timeline a little here, but I would argue that the canon timeline is a little blurry in the first place, so who's to say how much time actually takes place between cut scenes? (I mean, I know Kaiba's good, but did he really plan an entire tournament in like, a day?)


	15. Let's Have a Kiki

_"I built a home and wait for someone to tear it down_

_Then pack it up in boxes, head for the next town running._

_I've got no roots, but my home was never on the ground."_

_~No Roots_ , Alice Merton

**-Chapter 16-**

**Let's Have a Kiki**

Alistair was certain Kaiba hadn't intended for 'if I feel like it' to become something of an inside joke between them, but after nearly a month of him saying it after their hour at the pool, he had to wonder if on some level it wasn't a bit tongue in cheek. Either that, or Kaiba actually wanted the escape hatch, which was also plausible.

By the end of the first week, the water wasn't nearly as frightening, and Alistair was beginning to understand why people might find swimming enjoyable, though he would never call it relaxing. Unfortunately, Kaiba's teaching skills showed no signs of improvement, for which he made no apologies.

"You're not  _paying_  me to do this," he reminded Alistair when the latter complained about his instructor's often harsh criticism.

"Which I guess you think gives you license to be a dick," Alistair had replied huffily, pushing his unpleasantly wet hair out of his eyes.

Seto shrugged in response, his eyebrow quirking slightly and a small smirk playing around his mouth. He put his arms up just in time to avoid getting hit in the face by the water Alistair shoved in his direction.

"You realize how childish that is, don't you?"

"Oh, shut up." But there was no real malice in it.

Initially, Seto had missed having the pool to himself and getting to unwind by swimming laps after work. And sometimes he stayed after Alistair had gone, but often he found something just as relaxing in the company of his house guest.

There existed for him a lingering fascination where Alistair was concerned. His first impression had been of a gullible victim of arrested development whose immature notions of good and evil were frankly laughable. It became clear over the months that this assessment held elements of truth, but beneath these seemingly damning shortcomings lay a paradoxical gift of perception. Alistair always seemed to know how he was feeling as though a barometer of his emotions hung beside him. It was unsettling but incredibly useful as Alistair had seemingly decided to go out of his way to ensure they got along.

Suspicion still lurked at the back of his mind, but as the days and weeks dragged on he could see nothing to justify it. Alistair, true to his word, never mentioned what he'd seen in the drawing room, nor did he pry into what had led Seto there. Nor did he seem to have any plans whatsoever; or none that he chose to discuss, and Seto wondered what Alistair was going to do once he left. His offer that Alistair work as a KC pilot still stood, but the redhead had never officially accepted, leaving Seto wondering if he had other ideas. Several times he'd found himself on the verge of asking, but hadn't.

* * *

Alistair had always looked down his nose on Valon and Raphael for using booze as a numbing agent, but by the end of the summer, he'd come to understand why they'd often turned to it. He'd started having unsettling dreams in which was always running around dark, labyrinthine settings searching for someone. Sometimes his brother, sometimes his mother, and sometimes he was unsure if he was looking for someone or running away. Alcohol, for all its evils, washed his mind of them, and so he basked in the blessedness of uninterrupted, restful sleep. He knew better than to settle into being a lonely drunk, though, which meant he'd had to find a more socially acceptable means of getting his fix.

It had never been his intention to entrench himself so deeply into Darren's friend group, but when the Kaiba brothers took a week-long vacation for Mokuba's birthday, Alistair had found himself untethered, and as a result, he had become a regular fixture at Darren's. 

The apartment acted as a kind of halfway house and home base for a large portion of Domino U's queer student body in town over the summer for classes or internships. At first, many of their discussions of student life and politics had left him nodding along, raising his can of beer to his lips when anyone seemed on the verge of asking his opinion. But after a while, he discovered that through their annotated audiobook version, he had come to understand most of what they were talking about down to the gossip they were prone to engaging in about each other. And in the freedom of the summer there always seemed to be time for a booze-fueled kiki.

A kiki, by Darren's definition, seemed to be a gathering of his best friends, organized for the purpose of discussing one of three things: the various niches of academia they inhabited, politics, or pop culture. Sometimes a mix of all three. As long as the handle of vodka or cans of beer held out, these discussions could last until late in the night.

When Alistair arrived at the apartment and let himself in using the keycode that was part of the Darren Wiley friendship package, he was unsurprised to hear shrieking laughter before he'd even opened the door.

In addition to his roommate, Britney, the core of Darren's 'squad' consisted of three members. Milena was, as decided by everyone else, the resident 'hot girl'. He'd never seen her looking less than perfectly put-together, no matter what time of night it was or what they'd been doing. Red lipstick seemed to permanently pigment her lips, and thick arched eyebrows set above large dark eyes gave her a sultry appearance that Alistair had seen land her a parade of girls. 

Any late night political discussion was usually sparked by Henry, who Alistair had never seen without his phone in his hand. He wasn't sure what to make of Henry, whose obsession with following the news seemed oddly mismatched with his role on campus as a theater actor and costume designer.

Rounding out the group was Christian. Easily the most flamboyant, Christian sported a dramatic and ever-expanding range of hair colors in various styles that often clashed with his loose, floral shirts. That Boy George and David Bowie were his style icons was almost too on the nose not to feel contrived. It was Christian's cackling that Alistair could hear through the door.

He entered the apartment, kicked off his shoes, and gave a vague, general greeting. He could tell the moment he sat down beside Darren on the sofa that it was a kiki night. 90s pop music blasted from Britney's computer speakers and a handle of cheap vodka and several two liters of soda acted as the coffee table centerpiece.

The group had thrown themselves haphazardly around the room, Milena sharing a woebegone bean bag chair with Henry, the majority of her body lying on the floor next to her empty cup, while Britney and Darren lounged on the sofa. Christian, seemingly unable to sit still, was perched precariously at the edge of the coffee table, one hand curled loosely around a plastic cup and the other holding his cell phone.

"You might want to get some before we completely smash it," Darren said hospitably to Alistair, pointing at the handle with his own half-finished drink.

Alistair thanked him and leaned across to the table to tease a fresh cup off a largely depleted stack and inexpertly mixed the vodka and soda. He grimaced at the first mouthful, but knew after several more the disgust would fade.

In the interim, Christian had doubled over with laughter, long bright green bangs falling into his eyes like the bizarre plumage of a parrot with its feathers on backwards.

"What are you laughing about?" Alistair asked with insincere curiosity.

"Daisy made a new post on PictureThis," Christian explained through his giggles.

Daisy, who Alistair was half-convinced was a myth rather than a real person, was a common target for jokes, and Christian in particular seemed to derive pleasure from mocking the often pseudo-intellectual captions of her social media posts.

The picture in question was of Daisy sitting in what looked like a lecture hall. Her long pale hair had been pulled into two braids and she had a pen propped against her pillowy lips as though deep in concentration. The caption read: "we are the world we create."

Vapid perhaps, but not worthy of even cracking a smile over in Alistair's opinion, though he did so obligingly as Christian tilted his phone away again.

He sipped his drink as he took in the usual rounds of anecdotes about people he only knew by name, careful to laugh in all the right places as he surreptitiously refilled his cup two more times.

When the daily rehash finally came to an end, Darren unexpectedly got up from the couch .

"I realized today I had a ton of printing credit left over and I thought I'd put it towards the beautification of the living room. You're gonna gag when I show you!" He disappeared into his bedroom and immediately had his seat stolen by Milena. The powerfully floral scent of her perfume, already notable in any room she occupied, seemed to become infused unpleasantly with his already questionable mixed drink, making it a struggle to choke down. Alistair thought it might be rude to move far enough away to avoid tasting her perfume, though, so he forced himself to chug the rest.

"What do we think?" Darren asked, returning from his room and brandishing what appeared to be a life-size blow-up of Kaiba's shirtless PictureThis photo.

"Oh my god, yas!" Christian's stamp of approval was backed up by the rest of the group. "Can I just?" he joined Darren and stood against the paper so his back was pressed to poster-Kaiba's chest. "Maybe you'd like to let me take this to your room for a while?" he joked and the others laughed.

"Alistair, your face," Britney giggled suddenly and Alistair quickly closed his mouth and looked away.

"Oh!" Christian added teasingly. "Maybe you need this more than I do!"

"No! It's not that!" Alistair protested as he felt himself starting to flush. "I...it..."

"You've never seen that picture before? Who  _are_  you?" Milena demanded lightly. "I'm a lesbian and even I've forced myself to look a few times."

"'Forced,' yeah right," Darren chided her. "You can't tell me you wouldn't peg Seto Kaiba if you had the chance."

This comment sent them off on a tangent about whether or not Kaiba would be a top or a bottom and what they'd all do if they had the opportunity to be his sugar baby.

Knowing how much Kaiba hated that picture and watching a roomful of people talk about him like that made Alistair increasingly uncomfortable the longer it went on.

"Hey, guys," he said after the conversation had continued for almost ten minutes. "Maybe we could talk about something else. This is stupid." It was the first time he'd ever given a contrary opinion about anything the others talked about, and in their drunkenness, they found it funny.

"You feeling left out?" Darren asked with a grin. "What would  _you_  do with all that money?"

Somehow, that was the last straw. "You know, you guys are always talking about how it's wrong to objectify people, but look at what you're doing! Why is it ok to do it to him?" He tilted his chin briefly towards the poster, which Darren had tacked to the wall above the couch.

Instead of feeling ashamed and dropping it as Alistair had expected, the group largely seemed to take offence.

"You can't possibly think," Christian began, for once sounding serious, "that catcalling women on the street is the same as talking about fucking a celebrity none of us will ever even meet."

"Yeah, I do actually," Alistair replied firmly, setting his cup on the table. It was a stupid argument, he knew that, but he was unable to stop himself from pressing on now that he'd started.

The laughter left everyone's faces as the unexpected tension started to mount.

"Guys, let's just chill," Henry said, detaching himself from his phone and attempting to lightly pull Christian down onto the beanbag with him, but Christian yanked his arm away.

"Oh, ok, I see, so do you also think that objectifying male celebrities who post half-naked pictures of themselves on PictureThis leads to sexual assault? Because that's what happens to women whether they've posted sexual pictures of themselves or not."

"That isn't what I'm talking about," Alistair snapped. "Look:  _you've_  said that you hate it when people reduce women to their bodies, and so now I'm saying that I don't like doing that about anybody, so can we just talk about something else?"

"Seriously, guys," Britney agreed tentatively, inching towards her laptop and turning the volume up.

But for whatever reason, Christian too had decided not to let it go.

"Ok," he said with a dramatic, sweeping gesture that caused the plastic baubles on his earrings to jangle together. "You want to talk about something else? What about the fact that you think you're too good for us?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Alistair demanded hotly, his hackles raised once more. He found himself standing up, and sensed the room's collective wince when they realized the argument wasn't going to be extinguished so easily.

"We're just hanging out and having a good time, and you're sitting over there with your fucking moral superiority. Like, who the hell cares about Seto Kaiba's feelings? Honestly, I would have expected someone like you to be worried about more important things." Christian crossed his arms, his slightly bloodshot eyes daring Alistair to rebut.

Milena and Darren gasped, and for a moment, the only other sound in the room was Britney Spears's repetitive request to 'hit me baby one more time.'

" _Someone like me_?" Alistair spat, now so angry that each word was a tremendous effort. He could feel his nails biting into his trembling palms and was dimly aware of the tightness of his muscles.

"Christian," Henry cut in sharply, "that's really n-."

"Yeah, someone like you," Christian said over him, his cheeks flushed scarlet with vodka. "We know you've probably seen some really messed up stuff, alright? Doesn't mean you get to be all 'holier than thou' especially since you're obviously doing well enough for yourself now to afford those Balmain jeans. Unless of course you got them the same way you get yourself all those free drinks at Byzantium. Oh, I  _dare_  you to hit me." While he'd been talking, Alistair had gotten close enough that they were standing almost nose to nose, and for a moment, the stone on his necklace seemed to glimmer a bright turquoise.

"How dare you imply," Alistair breathed through clenched teeth, "that I would feel  _superior_  because of what I've been through. I've seen kids get shot in the street because they stayed out past curfew and heard people screaming while they watched their houses burn. And you think I think of that as a trump card I can hold over you to win some petty argument? Fuck you."

Fighting against his instinct to sink his fist into the side of Christian's face, Alistair shoved past him, ignoring Darren's weak request that he stop. The unexpected bullseye Christian had scored felt like it was soaking his self-image in bloody disillusionment and he knew he couldn't stay in the apartment a moment longer than he had to.

He yanked his coat off a hook by the door and left without looking back to see if the others had unfrozen.

As he stomped towards the elevator, Alistair wasn't sure if he wanted to kick the wall or cry. He never should have let Mokuba buy clothes for him. He should have insisted on somehow paying his own way. Shouldn't have agreed to being kept by the Kaibas like a glorified pet in the first place. And he certainly shouldn't have acted so shamefully in public. 

He jabbed the down button on the elevator and rested his forehead against the wall. It had been stupid trying to be friends with them. He should have known that they had never really accepted him. He'd only been kept around because he'd hooked up with their leader and they probably assumed he still was.

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, and he became aware that he didn't know where he wanted to go. He trusted himself to drive, but drive where? Back to the Kaiba mansion? No. Get a motel room? But with whose money? Kaiba's? He snickered humorlessly. It had been almost funny listening to them talk about what they'd do if they had access to Kaiba's fortune: go on lavish vacations, buy a private island, bathe in gold, hire a personal chef. But here he was, in possession of Mokuba debit card, and he couldn't even bring himself to book a room at a one star motel.

After stepping off the elevator into the lobby, he was able to swallow his anger enough to consider his options, though he came up unsatisfied.

Not wanting to risk one of them chasing him down, Alistair finally just left the building and began wandering aimlessly up the sidewalk, his anger draining out with each step, replaced instead by something heavy and impassive.

     For the most part, the city was off the streets, either asleep or up partying for the last weekend before the start of the fall semester. It was colder than he'd expected, almost too cold for the mosquitoes, though he saw one hopeful bat flit between two tortured trees, butchered by young couples, and desecrated by careless dog walkers.

Maybe he should just drive back to the house. What was one more night? But his feet carried him past the parking garage and he turned absently in a dizzying series of lefts and rights. Occasionally, a car drove past and Alistair wondered where anyone could be going so late at night.  _Probably the hospital,_ he thought morbidly.

Unsurprisingly, almost everything was closed for the night. The corner liquor store, surely teeming with customers only hours before, stood dark and silent. In accordance with the unspoken law, it was an ugly, beige building that seemed unsure of what shape it wanted to be, one end curved around the street, another tapering off jaggedly like the end of a block of cheese. Nestled against its run-down side was a nondescript burger joint called Barbara's Burgers and BBQ that seemed at one time to have been painted a bright blue. A yellowing sign in the window proclaimed it to be the recipient of the 2008 'best burger in town' award, an accolade apparently given out annually by the Domino Times.

The sign made Alistair frown. The owner had probably been so proud of that recognition at the time. He imagined a Trudy-like woman beaming as she taped the paper to the window. He wondered how much time she'd spent straightening it and changing the height so that every passerby would notice it. Now, the edges were curling and the letters had faded to gray.

Eventually, Alistair chanced upon an all-night coffee shop, the number '24' lit up above the door in neon pink.

He was relieved to discover he would be the only one there, able to drink a coffee in peace while he figured out what to do. When he approached the counter, he realized that the dumpy middle-aged barista was wearing a Battle City t-shirt under his apron. It almost made Alistair laugh.

"Can I just get a coffee? For here," he clarified, his eyes on a sticker on the cash register that said 'Brewtiful.'

"You're not thinking of robbing me, are ya?" the barista asked, his tone somewhere between joking and serious.

"No! Of course not." Alistair quickly reached for his wallet and extricated the correct change.

"You're from across the border, aren't ya?" the man inquired much more conversationally as he placed the cash in the till. Alistair nodded curtly, hoping that would be the end of it.

"Thought so," the barista said as though it was only through his keen sense of observation that this fact had been uncovered. "I can tell by your eyes. You get people dying their hair that color every now and again, but you can't buy those eyes."

"I guess not."

The coffee machine began to gurgle and whine, and the barista was momentarily distracted as he set about emptying the filter and pouring the steaming liquid into a ceramic mug which he carefully placed in Alistair's hands.

"There you go."

"Thanks." Alistair intended to sit as far away from the counter as possible in case there was any doubt that he wanted to be left alone. Before he could turn around, however, it seemed the barista was determined to make one more stab at conversation, bored no doubt after hours of quietly waiting for someone to walk in.

"You know, I always wondered if it was true about the girls you got over there." He sounded almost conspiratorial.

"They exist," Alistair replied uncertainty, and the man laughed.

"So I've heard. No, no, I mean, in bed. You always hear about how you haven't had sex until you've played with fire."

The expression gave Alistair pause, but he couldn't think of where he'd heard it before.

"I wouldn't know," he replied honestly and instantly regretted it. He could sense that he was being scrutinized, and was held in place by it.

"No, of course you wouldn't." The barista's tone had gone cool. He turned his back on his customer and began clearing out the inside of the coffee pot.

Unnerved, Alistair followed his initial instinct to sit by the door and forced himself to chug the scalding coffee before setting the mug on the table, tossing down a tip, and slipping back into the night, his stomach lurching uncomfortably with its mixed contents of alcohol and caffeine.

A few buildings down, he caught his reflection in a storefront window, illuminated by a nearby street lamp. His own pale gray eyes looked back at him, and for the first time, he saw himself the way everyone else had always seen him: as a refugee and a foreigner. That's what Christian had really been saying; that he shouldn't be allowed to have nice things. He should be hollow-eyed and downtrodden, and oh so thankful to be there so that his life could finally begin. Except, apparently, he wasn't ever supposed to get past the first part.

Was that how Trudy saw him too? Mokuba? Kaiba? Some upstart foreigner who had no right to any emotion other than gratitude? Whose obligation was to dumbly agree with with everyone else said because he didn't and couldn't know any better? Did they think he was stupid because no one had offered an alternative after his school had been reduced to rubble by a stray shell?

He sat down on the gravely pavement, the brick wall rough against his back, and stared vacantly at the darkened windows of the grocery store across the street. What was he doing here? What was he ever going to be able to do here?

If he applied for asylum he was just going to go from being Kaiba's charity case to the government's. And that was if they even accepted his application. And then what? He'd have a pilot's license he couldn't use, and no credentials to his name other than a tenuous association with Paradias if Dartz had bothered keeping any records.

A laugh burbled up through unsmiling lips. And he'd thought that he might be able to go to  _college_? He'd be lucky if he could get a job stocking shelves at a gas station.

_Maybe I should go back_. His life in Domino was feeling increasingly meaningless, so why not? Take his chances in his own country where maybe he could actually make something of himself. But even as he thought it, Alistair knew it wasn't any better of a plan. He had nowhere to go there, he knew no one, and moreover, it scared him.

Just the thought of breathing in ash and dust made his mouth dry. And in the silence of the night, he could hear the screaming, the sounds of stampeding feet, could feel the ache of running until being forced to heave up whatever you'd managed to eat onto your feet.

He couldn't go back.

His fingers curled into the cracks on the sidewalk around him before he wrapped his arms around his knees and buried his face against them, making no effort this time to stop himself from crying.


	16. Concrete and Stone

_**"** I can't find myself here again_  
_I don't recognize myself anymore_  
_Come and get me out of here_  
_For that I'd give everything_  
_I want to travel to distant lands_  
_I want to go back."_

 _~Hilf mir Fliegen_ (Help Me Fly), Tokio Hotel

 **Concrete** **and Stone**

When he saw that Alistair hadn't come home the night before, Seto thought little of it as Alistair so often stayed in the city overnight these days. Still, as he pulled out of the driveway to begin his morning commute, he felt the same twinge of annoyance he always felt when he discovered that Alistair hadn't come back. And as always, he admonished himself for it. There was no clause in their agreement that Alistair stay locked in the house, and he had no justification for adding it. He turned his focus to Roland's latest memo.

Apparently, the proposed site for the new Kaibaland Duel Dome was home to an obscure, endangered species of toad. After having this fact pointed out to him by the environmental health and safety officer, the lead architect had lost his temper and threatened to shove one of the creatures up the man's ass. Roland claimed that the two had since made amends, but the fact remained that the site had to be changed and a new location given Seto's stamp of approval.

It was one of his more tedious and time-consuming duties, but he supposed it was as good an excuse as any for getting out of producing another selfie for Tanaka.

Since they'd run through the original pictures taken at his house, Seto had been dodging Tanaka's messages about scheduling another shoot by uploading content about Grand Championship and updates on the VR pods. Soon, he'd run out of excuses not to meet with him, but for now, an endangered toad would do.

Though still heavily under construction, KaibaLand was starting to take shape. Most of the track had been laid for the Blue Eyes White Dragon roller coaster, candy-colored kiosks dotted half-completed paths, and work had begun on digging out patches for the various gardens. Among the buildings covered in construction tape and platforms was what would be home to the indoor duel arenas and arcade. Seto was pleased to see that the builders hadn't forgotten to demarcate the locations of the Blue Eyes White Dragon statues that would guard the entrance. He'd commissioned the same artist who'd brought the dragon in his foyer to life to make them, telling Kobayashi he'd pay for them himself if the CFO thought they were too expensive. KaibaLand was his endgame; there was no way he was going to cut corners.

He joined Roland, head architect Brian Rossi, and environmental health and safety officer Wilson Tremblay in a tent that had been erected alongside the KaibaLand hotel and resort.

The moment he entered, Seto had to resist the urge to wrinkle his nose in disgust. The stench of body odor and old canvas hung heavily in the stale air which was being cooked by the noonday sun.

Rossi had abandoned his suit jacket over the back of a fold-out chair, but that appeared to have done nothing but reveal the massive sweat stains on his shirt, so in an odd twist, Tremblay, who didn't seem like a man who normally wore anything that couldn't be accessorized with cargo shorts, managed to maintain a more put-together outward appearance, though the shininess of his face and pate belayed that it wasn't only Rossi's body perfuming the tent.

The KaibaLand blueprints had been splayed out across a spindly picnic table and Seto noticed that someone had slashed a red 'X' through the Kaiba Dome.

Whatever Roland had assumed otherwise, Rossi and Tremblay had not set aside their differences since the discovery the day before. The men hardly waited for Seto to sit down before starting up their argument again as though his arrival marked the beginning of the second act of their two-man performance.

"Where else on this map do you see space for a duel dome?" Rossi demanded of Tremblay, thumping one hand against the map. "Just capture the damn thing and take it with you!"

"The Habitats Directive is very clear on this point," Tremblay responded, reaching into his suit pocket for a handkerchief which he used to begin dabbing at the perspiration along his receding hairline. "Water abstraction goes against-."

"So basically what you're saying is that some three-inch frog is standing between Mr. Rossi and the construction of my duel dome?" Seto clarified, resisting the urge to rub his temples.

"Look," Tremblay said, turning his back on Rossi to address Seto directly. "I understand that you're trying to build a theme park here and that you don't care whether or not the animal we found yesterday dies. It's just a toad, right?" He tucked his handkerchief back in his breast pocket where it formed an untidy lump. "But where does that stop, Mr. Kaiba? Would it make a difference to you if it were a fox or a rabbit or-."

"Save it for your next flyer, Mr. Tremblay," Seto interrupted, putting his hand up. There really was only one solution, and he'd just as soon cut to the chase rather than let the nature do-gooder stand on a soap box. "First of all, let's be honest about what you're really asking of me. We both know that this isn't just about moving the dome; once you report back to your department, they're going to make me rezone the whole park."

"Rezone the whole park?" Rossi demanded loudly, a vein in his forehead pulsating with anger. "I got approval for this project a year and a half ago! We're almost a third of the way through construction!"

"There's a reason you haven't mentioned this to your superior yet, isn't there?" Seto asked Tremblay candidly, his fingers steepled on the table. "I think you see an opportunity here.

I'm sure there are grand projects an underfunded office like yours has never been able to find backing for. And as you so astutely realized, I can change that. So how about you go back to your hotel and think about which parks could use a little bit of a hand, or that research that just never quite had the budget it needed to get off the ground, and when you've made up your mind, give Roland a call and I'll take care of it. Kaiba Corporation wants to be on the right side of history, after all. As I'm sure do you."

The brazonness of the bribe caught Tremblay off-guard. Everyone knew who his father had been, of course, but to see Gozaburo Kaiba's sly, cool smile on the face of his nineteen year-old son was distinctly unsettling.

"So what do you say?" Seto continued, getting up and holding out his hand politely. "Do we have a deal?"

Seto had known before even entering the tent that Tremblay would agree, so his obligatory hesitation was boring. But before long, the agreement had been sealed with a handshake.

"Roland, I want you to take Mr. Tremblay to buy a tank for his new pet," Seto instructed as he let his arm fall back to his side. "And Rossi," his gaze shifted to the architect. "As soon as Mr. Tremblay has secured his little friend, I want you to switch priority to the completion of the duel dome."

"But sir," Rossi protested as Tremblay and Roland made to depart. "We're in the middle of about five different things already! The infrastructure for the theater has to be finished, the other two roller coasters are having problems with-."

"I don't know why I expected you to just do your job," Seto mused, eyeing the architect coldly. "But considering that you willfully called for the destruction of what should be a protected habitat, without my knowledge, you've put yourself in a precarious position. So if I were you, I'd rally my team and start draining some water or shoveling dirt or whatever it is you need to do to turn that mud out there into concrete before that decision comes back to haunt you."

Rossi started and stopped several sentences before seeming to decide that in this case, silence was golden.

"We're done here," Seto said, walking past him to the exit where Saito was waiting for him. "And Rossi: burn this tent, get a new one, and invest in a fan; this isn't some nineteenth century battlefield."

It was amazing that the dusty air of a construction site could ever be considered refreshing, but once he was no longer in the tent, Seto took a moment to bask in it and wished he had time to change his clothes again before heading into the office. Since that was out of the question, he did the next best thing and sprayed himself with the small vial of cologne he kept in his jacket pocket. Next to him, Saito coughed lightly.

* * *

If Trudy had ever called him at work before, Seto couldn't remember it, and he immediately assumed something had happened to Mokuba when her number showed up on his screen late that afternoon. His day had been going rather smoothly until that point, and he'd been tranquilly answering emails after meeting with Kobayashi to get his approval for a sizable donation to the Domino National Wildlife Conservation Center.

"What happened?" he asked after reluctantly taking the call.

"Well that's a fine way to answer the phone," Trudy noted with some indignation and he relaxed; if she had time to be offended, she couldn't be calling about anything dire.

"Look, I'm busy right now," he lied. "Can this wait?" He suddenly had a nagging suspicion that she intended to lay into him about going out with her friend's daughter, Momo, again and it wasn't something he felt like dealing with in his few precious minutes of relaxation.

"I understand," she said, "this won't take but a moment. And don't think I didn't ask Mokuba and Kanzo first; I'd never go bothering you at work unless I'd exhausted my other options, you know."

"Fine, what is it?" he pressed, leaning back in his chair, only mildly more intrigued. It could still be about Momo.

"Do you know where Alistair is? No one else seems to, and he hasn't been back since yesterday. Of course, I know he stays with friends sometimes, but he's usually home by now and he wouldn't answer my calls and I--."

"Why would I know where he is?" Seto interrupted, his tone uninterested even as he felt his pulse begin to race. Alistair wouldn't just leave, would he?

"I'm sure I have no idea," Trudy answered huffily. "But I thought maybe he'd gone with you to practice flying your helicopter since he'd said something about needing more hours."

Seto was only half listening, his attention directed instead at his computer screen. A few clicks had brought him to a page he knew better than to use under the KC network, and so he was careful to reroute it under several layers of encryption. Now, even if someone tried to trace it back to him they'd have to explain what he was doing in Moscow and São Paulo and how he'd managed to get there and back without leaving his office.

"His whereabouts are none of my concern, and frankly, not yours either," he responded absently, already narrowing in on the last tower Alistair's phone had pinged off of. Cross-referencing the data with a digital map of the city, he was unsurprised to see that as of ten minutes ago, Alistair was still downtown.

"Look," he cut into Trudy's protests as he continued to pinpoint where Alistair most likely was. "If you want to spend the rest of the day worrying about someone you're not paid to care about, I can't stop you. But I think you're wasting your time, and now you've wasted five minutes of  _my_  time." His inquiry finally resolved, leaving him with a list of businesses in the vicinity of where Alistair's phone had last been registered. "If you're really concerned, feel free to file a missing person's report, but know that if you do he'll get deported. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do." He hung up before she could respond.

He finished scanning the list, mostly made up of government offices rather than high rises and university buildings, and frowned. What business did Alistair have there?

Annoyed by how invested he was in finding out, Seto dove a layer deeper and broke into Alistair's email account so he could view the search history associated with it. He could have easily used a program to hack the account for him, but he'd felt a strange compulsion to do it manually. Alistair had once called him predictable, and though the accusation held some merit, that didn't mean that Alistair wasn't predictable too.

Seto grinned after guessing the password on his second try: DYNADUDE. His first guess, of course, had been 'Mikey', and his third guess would have been 'Sewell'. He wasn't sure why he even remembered the name of Alistair's stupid cat; just a random piece of useless information he'd probably picked up from Trudy at some point, but it had come to him easily enough to leave him oddly disconcerted.

He scanned Alistair's search history with a trained eye, taking in each page and assembling them, puzzle-like, into a fleshed-out pathway to his exact whereabouts and intentions.

The top results gave him the answer he'd been looking for which, like Alistair's password, should have been easy to guess. And it was nothing he wasn't capable of taking care of, provided that Alistair hadn't gone through with it yet. But before he turned to the more tedious task of accessing the files of the Domino Migration Agency, Seto let himself roam a little further back through the list of websites Alistair had visited. If he'd been using his phone to do anything illicit, his search history didn't betray him. Granted, Alistair had the computer skills it would take to wipe away his digital fingerprints just as easily as he'd allegedly broken into the KC headquarters security cameras, but once again, Seto could think of no reason why he would.

Beyond his initial, weak denials that Dartz hadn't tricked him, that it  _was_  Kaiba's company that had ruined his life, Alistair had seemed to accept the truth, evidenced by his considerably more docile behavior, so it wasn't a discovery of Alistair's continued determination to take down Kaiba Corporation that erased Seto's grin from before. It was with an uncomfortable jolt that he noted that Alistair had twice gone to his PictureThis account: once the day of the photoshoot, and once just the night before.  _Et tu, Brute?_  It really shouldn't have felt like a stab in the back--Alistair owed him no loyalty. It rather cheapened the effect of the sympathy he'd shown, though.

Seto knew he was under no obligation to intervene in Alistair's self-imposed martyrization, especially since Alistair had never proven himself to be any more of a friend than Yugi was. In fact, Alistair getting himself deported or at the very least put on a tight leash by the migration courts was an easy way to ensure neither Alistair nor anything he represented would ever bother him again.

He pulled his phone back into his hand and tapped it thoughtfully against the lip of his desk as he considered.

* * *

Not since being on the run could Alistair remember being so exhausted. With all his energy being exerted on his efforts to stay awake, he knew he wouldn't be able to remain upright much longer.

He clumsily switched a half-empty paper coffee cup from one hand to the other and tried to shake off the stiffness in his fingers.

From the numerous loops he'd been making since early that morning, Alistair knew he was approaching the migration office again. He tripped on an uneven patch of sidewalk just as he had an hour ago. The momentary jolt of adrenaline jarred him into a sickly feeling of consciousness, but even before his heart had slowed to its normal, steady rhythm, his eyelids had begun to droop. He quickly raised the coffee to his lips and sloppily drank from it. The lid must have become dislodged when he'd tripped because a third of the remaining contents of the cup spilled down his chin and the front of his shirt.

Two girls passing by tittered at his misfortune, but he didn't have the energy to waste on a glare. Instead, he laughed too, a sound more like a cough.

Alistair removed the lid, downed the rest of the lukewarm coffee, then deposited the lot in the nearest trash can, already packed with the remnants of a dozen people's on-the-go lunches.

Now close enough that it blocked out the painful late-morning sunshine, Alistair looked up at the facade of the Domino Migration Agency. It looked like an approximation of Roman architecture designed by someone on a shoestring budget who'd only had pictures of Washington D.C as references. What was supposed to be an intimidating set of wide, stone steps leading up to several sets of doors sheltered under eight bulky white pillars lost the illusion of grandeur under the remotest scrutiny. Everything was concrete, not stone, for one thing, and a multitude of dings in both the stairs and the columns made it all look cheap rather than impressively weathered after having stood strong against the elements century after century. Something about the fakeness of it had kept Alistair from walking straight in when the office had opened at eight-thirty.

None of the men and women in dark, brooding suits that had streamed up the cracked steps an hour before that had endowed him with confidence either.

He'd told himself that being off-put by a building or the color of anyone's suit was childish and shallow. This had led to his internal agreement that he'd stop walking in circles the next time he passed by, an agreement he'd renewed now eight times.

With the afternoon wearing on towards dinnertime, and his confidence that even if he did go inside he'd be able to string together a coherent sentence waning, he was starting to seriously doubt the soundness of an already ill-conceived idea.

Like an extra in a zombie movie, Alistair lurched drunkenly towards an unoccupied bench someone had set up along the office's treelawn, populated by two trees that had been planted like sentries on either end of the grassy strip.

The distance the bench put him away from the building made it look even more offensively tacky. While in places like Washington D.C. such buildings rose up impressively to tower over the city in menacing austerity, The Domino Migration agency was no taller than the bank or hotel it shared the block with.

In his fatigued state, Alistair couldn't put his finger on why it all left him wanting to have the place torn down, but later it would become clear to him that it was because of what a deliberate lie it was. Anyone hoping to immigrate had to come to this office, so as a first impression, it needed to be palatial to demonstrate just how magnificent of a country Domino was, and how much of an honor it would be to belong to it. 

Domino was rich enough that the agency could have been built of real stone without putting anyone out of anything but a new cappuccino machine in the Parliament cafeteria, could have been given the scale the architecture demanded. But the government hadn't seen the point of investing in something real because they apparently hadn't thought anyone coming there would be any less impressed by a toy model, hadn't thought they were worth wasting stone on when concrete would do.

The moment Alistair's back hit the rough wooden slats of the bench he felt an almost magnetic force pulling his eyes closed. If he could rest them, even for a moment, he was sure he would stop feeling nauseated, the fog in his head would clear, and he'd finally be able to climb the stairs he'd been avoiding all day. He just needed a few seconds…

His phone buzzed against his hip. The vibration got him to open his eyes a sliver, but he made no move to take it out of his pocket. If sleep deprivation hadn't stalled his ability to feel anything other than tired, he might have been surprised that the battery had lasted so long, although he supposed that ignoring every phone call and text message for the past twenty hours had contributed to its longevity.

It buzzed two more times. A call then. Probably Darren again. His hands shaking with wasted caffeine, Alistair worked the phone out of his pocket with the intention of hitting ignore and then shutting it off. He should have shut it off hours ago, but on some level he may have hoped for something to change his mind, point him in a different direction. But all of Darren's texts had been hollowly conciliatory and full of excuses. Trudy had called him several times, but while she more than likely would have been able to convince him to go back to the Kaiba estate with words of motherly worry, he knew she would have done the same for anyone.

A slight crinkling of his eyebrows and a skipped heartbeat were the closest signs of shock his body could muster when he saw the number displayed on his screen. It was a number his phone didn't recognize, but one that he'd memorized almost a year ago.

"If there's one type of person I can't stand, it's a time waster." Kaiba's gruff tone sounded almost too crisp to be real, and for a moment Alistair wondered if he hadn't fallen asleep after all. "And if you do what you're thinking about doing, you'll have wasted an entire summer of my time. So if that was your idea of ultimate revenge against me, congratulations."

"What?" Alistair rasped, still unclear whether he was actually talking to Kaiba or not.

"Go home, Alistair," Kaiba clarified. "I would ask you what you were thinking lurking outside the agency in the first place, but why bother? It's a stupid idea, and the fact that you haven't gone through with it means you know that too."

Alistair felt suddenly incredibly chagrined as though his father had caught him attempting to take out their car for a midnight joyride.

It was something about the expression 'go home' that made him realize it all  _had_  been stupid. A knee-jerk reaction. Had he really intended to just leave Sewell like that? And what would he have even said to anyone in that office? How had he intended to explain how he'd gotten into Domino in the first place when the border was locked down almost airtight?

"Ok," he agreed finally.

"Meet me at the pool at ten."

When Kaiba didn't immediately hang up, Alistair realized he was waiting for some kind of verbal confirmation.

"If I feel like it," he answered finally, finding the strength somewhere deep within for the ghost of a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At some point when I was writing this I decided to go the way of the dub and consider Domino to be its own fictional country and city rather than a province of Japan because A) that helps with the geography of it all (I mean, honestly, did Mokuba fly from Japan to California in a chopper?) and B) it gives me an opportunity to world build that I just couldn't pass up.
> 
> Also: here's the original German lyrics from the song at the beginning of the chapter: 
> 
> Ich find mich hier nicht wieder
> 
> Erkenn mich selbst nicht mehr
> 
> Komm und zieh mich raus hier
> 
> Ich gib alles dafür her
> 
> Ich hab Fernweh
> 
> Ich will zurück  
> ~Hilf mir Fliegen, Tokio Hotel


	17. Even

 "As I stand here on the dark highway at night

I feel like the stunned animal

Staring into the oblivion of life's headlights." 

~Judas1.com

  **Even**

     The universe had aligned to ensure his safe passage back to the Kaiba estate that day. Or at least, that’s what Alistair assumed. He had no other explanation for how he had been able to commute an hour from the city to the suburbs without getting into a fatal accident since he surely hadn’t stayed awake the entire time.

    The walk from the bench outside the Domino Migration Agency to the car garage where he’d parked his motorcycle had felt like a pilgrimage. His back and legs ached down to the bone and he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d looked down at his hands and seen the veiny, knotted skin of an old man. That he’d slept fifty years rather than five minutes since getting off the phone with Kaiba.  

    Even as he'd forced himself to take each step, he hadn’t been sure he’d really spoken to Kaiba at all. It could easily have been a dream or a hallucination brought on by sleep-deprivation like the thousands of scurrying shapes that had begun manifesting themselves in the corners of his peripheral vision only to vanish when he jerked around to face them.

    The hallucinations, for all that they were unsettling, were at least a distraction from the pain pulsing serenely through him like the bubbles in a lava lamp, starting in his feet then propelled upwards through his calves and back, and finally colliding with the top of his head where it divided in half before settling briefly at his temples. Then of course, the cycle repeated as it drifted back down his body again.

    Worse than the hallucinations and the pain and the noise and the light, was being surrounded by people. The swiftness with which a thousand people roiled the air around him with their perfumes and colognes made him feel seasick as he plodded towards his motorcycle.

    He couldn’t remember getting to the parking garage as more than a series of misty images: a lit up number three on a dirty elevator keypad, a pink parking pass shoved into a pocket, the exchange of money with a green meter that vacantly wished him a pleasant day.

    Actually driving back the the Kaiba estate had equally felt like sleepwalking, his body staying on his motorcycle out of muscle-memory alone. The frustrated honking of the commuters unfortunate enough to find themselves behind him sounded like cannonfire, and on several occasions, had startled him so badly he’d nearly toppled over.

    Though more translucent than any waking memory ought to be, the clearest moment of the journey came when he was driving through the small kingdom that was the affluent neighborhood above which the Kaiba estate loomed. _That’s what the Migration Agency was supposed to look like_.

    He couldn’t have said whether it was Saito, Kanzo, or a trained flamingo that let him onto the grounds, because it was only when Trudy intercepted him in the hallway off the garage that his trance was temporarily broken. She gave him a sound lecture about not answering his phone and about how ‘dreadful’ he looked and how worried she’d been, and he registered dimly that she must have been the one who’d told Kaiba about his disappearance or else, how would he have known?

    Leaning heavily against the second-floor bannister, Alistair was just able to communicate to her that he didn’t want food and not to expect him for dinner--he intended to sleep straight through the night.

    Finally, she took him at his word that he’d call down to her if he changed his mind about dinner and promised to save him a plate in the upstairs kitchen if he woke up hungry.

    After she left, he seriously considered curling up right there on the landing and sleeping until someone dragged him to bed, but the part of his mind that valued societal decorum, though greatly diminished in his exhaustion, won out and he shuffled painfully down the hallway, not to his room, but to the private staircase that would allow him access to the pool.

    The wooden bench of the changing room was hard and unforgiving, but by the time Alistair pulled down several towels to pad it with he was beyond caring, and he was so tired it may as well have been a goosedown quilt. He lay down and blissfully allowed his eyes to slam shut. He’d heard somewhere that it took seven minutes for a person to fall asleep. _We’ll see_ , he thought with something more resembling a grimace than a wry smile crossing his lips.    

* * *

    He wouldn’t have awoken, even after rolling off the bench onto the floor while in the throes of a nightmare, had Kaiba not shaken him awake a quarter after ten.

    Pulling himself out of the dreamworld was like trying to swim to the surface of a pool of quicksand. Even as he forced his eyes open, sleep weighted them down and he was unable to look up at Kaiba through more than a squint.

    Kaiba hadn’t changed since he’d gotten home from work, Alistair noticed just before every ache he’d had before sleep had numbed them returned with a vengeance and an added layer of stiffness that made him wonder if he’d even be able to sit up.

    “Hey,” he croaked through parched lips, and hoped Kaiba would do most of the talking.

    “You could have spared yourself all of this, you know,” Seto began once he was sure Alistair was actually awake. He looked down at him, slumped against the remnants of a nest of towels. If he’d ever seen a person who looked more pathetic, he couldn’t remember it. Alistair’s skin had developed a sickly pallor, and an unruly tangle of red hair snarled around his face, the shadows under his eyes as pronounced as bruises. A dark stain that might have been coffee ran down the front of his shirt, and the backs of his jeans were covered in a gritty layer of dirt that had begun to rub off on the towels strewn around him. “You should have just asked me for a passport.”

    Alistair jerked one shoulder in what Seto assumed was supposed to be a shrug.

    “I’m trying to get rid of you with a clean conscience or I would have dropped you off at the Migration Agency myself.” Alistair shrugged again and Seto felt his exasperation sharpening into annoyance. “Look: just because it only occurred to _you_ two days ago that you didn’t have any documents, that doesn’t mean _I_ was that slow on the uptake.”

    “You knew?” Alistair asked with more awareness as against its will, his body lapsed further into consciousness.

    “Of course,” Seto scoffed. “What good was a pilot’s license going to do you without a passport or a social security number?”

    “I didn’t--.”

    “Think about it?” Seto finished for him, crossing his arms. “Obviously not.”

    “Why didn’t you tell me?” Alistair asked, pushing himself up to lean against the bench, and he suddenly realized he’d been lying on the floor.

    “Honestly, I thought you’d be smart enough to know I’d take care of it.”

    Relief flooded through Alistair like the caffeine from his coffees never could have. He was going to be ok. He’d be able to get a job, to start saving money. He didn’t have to risk getting sent back across the border.

    Seto watched the tension fall out of Alistair’s face as the latter allowed his words to sink in. He’d expected some sign of gratitude, at least a thank you, but instead, Alistair became alive with a sudden fury that seemed to give him the strength to stagger to his feet.

    “You had no right to do that without telling me!” Alistair yelled at him, and his voice echoed off the tiled floor. His bloodshot eyes were no longer half-closed, but alight with anger. 

    “No?” Seto asked snidely. “Then it’s your funeral.”

    The following silence lasted until Alistair looked away.

    “I never asked you to help me.”

    “I see. So you don’t want it?”

    “I don’t know,” Alistair muttered. And just as quickly as it had come, his rage seemed to die--a failed spark. He sank back onto the bench, his gaze trained on the floor.

    “What _do_ you want?” Seto demanded, perplexed. He’d thought for sure revealing to Alistair that he’d been working on getting the documents he needed would be the antidote to his angst.

    “I don’t know.” This time, the statement came out in a whisper. 

    Seto observed him critically and with some surprise. Aimless and disoriented panic widened Alistair’s silver eyes. Life had caught him in it's headlights, and Alistair wanted to be told what to do.

    It made sense. When in his life would he have had to make significant life choices? He’d presumably grown up obeying his parents, and after losing them, had done what Dartz had told him to. It was no different than him not being able to swim, really. Had Seto not known him, he would have been amused that a grown man who had vehemently claimed otherwise wanted the strain of choosing a pathway taken off of him. But Seto _did_ know Alistair.

    “Go upstairs, take a shower, and go to bed,” he instructed. “You look like someone dragged you backwards through a parking lot.”

    Alistair nodded even as his face twitched at the insult.

    “I’ll let you know when your documents are finished, but it should be soon. And as a matter of fact, meet me at breakfast tomorrow because we need to discuss that.”

    “Whatever.” The panic had faded to tired petulence.

    “You’re such an ingrate.” Seto rolled his eyes. “I expect you to pay me back by being the best pilot Kaiba Air has ever seen.”

    As far as Seto was concerned, that was the end of it, but as he turned on his heel to return upstairs, he heard the muffled rustling of Alistair pulling himself up again.

    “Thank you.” The voice was soft and brittle and chagrined.

    Knowing Alistair couldn't see his expression, Seto smiled. “Yeah, well. I guess this makes us even,” he said coolly.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't find any more specific way to credit the author of the opening quote, so if anyone knows, let me in on that.
> 
> Side note: Their website is super cool and has interesting art and intriguing life musings (I think they're kind of inspired by the songs the author links???)


	18. Missed Connections

  _"We were always in the right place at the wrong time, the wrong place at the right time, always just missing each other, always just a few inches from figuring the whole thing out."_

~Paul Auster, _Moon Palace_  

**Missed Connections**

Seto had never really believed Alistair would wake up in time to meet him at breakfast, but in order to justify checking on him the next morning, pretended that he had. _I’ll just get him up_ , he told himself as he was blow drying his hair. _I don’t want to deal with this later_.

    The ease with which he was now able to enter the master bedroom after avoiding it for so many years was more of a relief than he cared to admit. It had been stifling, living next to a room so overflowing with bad memories, almost as if it had been shrouded in the very plasma of Gozaburo’s ghost. There was the guest room too, of course, but nothing was ever going to be able to lift _that_ shadow.

    Alistair seemed to have halfheartedly taken his advice about a shower before flinging himself face-down onto the bed in his underwear, his phone charging on the bedside table. Seto hesitated on the verge of shaking him awake, his hand hovering just above Alistair’s bare shoulder. It wouldn’t be kind to wake him up so early in the morning after the night he’d had. And he supposed there was no particular reason why Alistair _had_ to be there; Trudy could fill him in later. Alistair rolled over in his sleep just then and Seto’s fingertips brushed against him. He jerked his hand back. What was he wasting his time here for? He turned to leave and noticed a small light pulsing on Alistair’s phone. It was really none of his business who Alistair talked to or why they might be messaging him, but on the other hand, it could be a co-conspirator.

    His ears straining for any indication that Alistair was anything but dead asleep, Seto surreptitiously clicked on his phone screen. He’d had three missed calls and four texts in the past twenty-four hours that he hadn’t bothered checking, and they were all from someone named Darren. As he quickly took in the contents of the text previews, Seto was able to infer that one of this Darren person’s friends had been the one to push Alistair to the Migration Agency. They’d apparently said something insulting. Friendship and drama certainly seemed to go hand in hand.

    But for all that the texts seemed innocent, Seto could sense a level of caring in the three missed calls and in the urgency in the texts that implied an intimacy transcending friendship. His hand clenched around the phone and he realized he was grinding his teeth.

    No longer caring if he woke Alistair up, Seto set the phone back on the table with a sharp _thump,_ and made no effort to deaden his footsteps or the click of the door as he left the room. He’d go through with his meeting with Trudy because it was the right thing to do, but the ridiculous fantasy he’d allowed himself to entertain, even if only tepidly, was going to have to be buried next to the feeble whim he’d once had about developing a real friendship with Yugi. 

* * *

     It took Seto the length of breakfast and two cups of coffee to lay out his plan to Trudy. He’d been careful to stress that she and George were under no obligation or pressure to get involved, and made it clear that if they had any trepidation about Alistair’s trustworthiness, they oughtn’t agree.

    “Full disclosure, in case this was unclear to you: what I’m suggesting is illegal, and if he screws up, you and George will be prosecuted too,” he said before biting into a piece of toast.

    “There’s no other way?” Trudy asked, her hands clasped in the folds of her apron.

    “In principle, no one should ever care enough to look past a passport and a social security number, but if they did, there would be a lot of blank space for him to explain.”

    “And I suppose you’re not in danger of any of this coming back to you?”

    Seto smirked. “Of course not. Even if I did trust him, his judgement isn’t infallible.”

    “I’ll have to discuss it with George,” she said, but Seto knew even if she didn’t yet that she was going to talk her husband into it. This was hardly her first rodeo.

    “Fine.” He drained the last of his coffee. “Oh, and before I go, there’s one more thing.” He pushed his mug aside to avoid toying with the handle. “Have your friend’s daughter call the office to set up a meeting with me. And don’t look too excited,” he added when she beamed at him. “I’m just going to talk to her so you’ll stop pestering me about it.”   

* * *

     The moment he opened his eyes, Alistair realized he’d overslept, but felt only mildly guilty; too grateful to be rid of the burning tiredness of the day before. Besides, it can’t have been important or Kaiba would have woken him up. He rolled onto his side and instinctively reached for his phone. He sighed when he saw that Darren had called him three more times. If he wanted to patch things up, he knew he’d have to respond soon, but he wasn’t sure he had the energy yet.

    Sewell meowed somewhere to his right and as soon as he made eye contact, she jumped down from the coffee table and trotted over to him, her purring audible even from a distance. As he rubbed her head, he realized she was probably hungry. But the bed was so comfortable and the sun shining in through the bay window was so warm… Sewell bit him hard on his hand before meowing and scuttling to her food bowl.

    Shaking off the sting of the bite, Alistair acquiesced and reluctantly got up, wincing at the pressure on his feet.

    “The things we do for love,” he told her.   

     To cleanse himself of the sting of Christian’s insult that lingered even two days later, Alistair spent the better part of the afternoon sorting through his possessions with the intent of getting rid of almost all the clothes he’d gotten with Mokuba. He planned to sell them, save some of the money, and use the rest to buy a less lavish wardrobe. And he was determined not to accept anything else from the Kaibas from then on. He would concede the need for a passport and a social security card, but after that, he wanted no more of it. 

    While he was grateful to have had Kaiba take the matter of what would become of his immediate future out of his hands, it was also frustrating. When did it all stop? Clearly, he wasn’t as ready to make it on his own as he’d thought, but until he had the chance to try, he was going to be stuck standing still. Was he prepared to fall into the job Kaiba’d offered him out of convenience?

   Sewell settled on top of the pants he’d been about to fold, so he took a moment to sit on the bed and stare vacantly out the window. The trees visible through the glass had already begun to turn a rainbow of dusky yellows and reds, and yet in the season that had passed since he’d learned of Dartz’s deceit and come to live with the Kaibas, he felt he hadn’t evolved at all.

     With his clothes rather tragically better sorted than anything else in his life, Alistair tucked his phone into the pocket of his jeans and inched his way down to the dining room with mincing steps. Mokuba was already sitting at the table talking to someone on the phone, his chair tilted back precariously.

    Lately, Mokuba seemed to have decided that ‘cool’ was going to be his aesthetic of choice. This manifested itself as a variety of affectations of which tilting his chair back was the most recent.

    “Yeah, I’ll probably see you guys later unless something comes up,” Mokuba was saying, absently raking the tablecloth with the tines of his fork. “It’s really busy at work right now since we’re still setting up Grand Championship.”

    Considering that Mokuba probably went into Kaiba Corporation headquarters once every two weeks, Alistair had to hide an amused smile as he sat down across from him.

    “You know I can’t tell you who got invited,” Mokuba continued, offering Alistair a small wave of acknowledgement. “Anyway, I’ve got to go, but I’ll let you know how many tickets I can get you. Later!”   

    “It’s nice of you to offer your friends tournament tickets,” Alistair said, pouring himself a glass of water from a nearby pitcher.

    “It’s not a big deal. I mean, I can get as many as I want.” Mokuba sounded smug. “And it's not like Seto's inviting anybody.” He dropped his chair back onto four legs with a bang. “Oh, speaking of which, do you want to go? Sorry, I totally forgot to ever ask you.”

    “No thanks. Duel Monsters was never really that interesting to me, to be honest. Besides,” he added with a slight frown. “I doubt your brother would want me as a part of his cheering section.”

    “Wait, didn’t you know? He’s not dueling this time.”

    Alistair stared at him. It was as though Mokuba had told him the sun had decided to stop shining. “Kaiba’s not dueling?”

    “Huh uh. He’s gonna be too busy.” Mokuba had gone back to raking his fork across the tablecloth. “I think it’s better this way to be honest,” he began, tilting his chair back again.

    Trudy arrived with a tray of sandwiches and a second pitcher of water just then. She reminded Mokuba that chairs had four legs not two, then commented on how much better Alistair looked, but hurried back downstairs so quickly Alistair wondered if she’d left the stove on. He’d expected her to lecture him about taking better care of himself at the very least, but he was too curious about Kaiba’s decision not to duel to dwell on her odd behavior.

    “Like I was saying,” Mokuba went on, ladening his plate with three sandwiches. “This way Seto might actually be able to take some time out for other stuff.” He sounded uncharacteristically sly.

    “Like what?” Alistair asked around a mouthful of turkey.

    “Well, you know how Trudy’s been trying to get Seto to go out with her friend’s daughter?”

    “Yeah, but come on: not dueling doesn’t mean he’s a totally different person,” Alistair pointed out quickly. 

    “I was surprised too, but he called me from work to ask me what I thought he should bring for her since I have more experience.” He tilted his chair back again.  “Apparently he invited her to come to dinner tomorrow.”

    Mokuba went on to talk more about the buzz being generated around Grand Championship and that his brother had even asked him to act as the MC instead of Roland. He tried his best to follow Mokuba’s tangent, but Alistair found it impossible to recover from the whiplash of the two bizarre bombshells he’d dropped. It was so far out of character for Kaiba to be anything but predictable that something must have caused him to go off the rails, but what?     

* * *

    As strange an alternate reality as the one he’d fallen into was, it was a timely distraction, and something Alistair was eager to engage with if only to avoid his own internal turmoil.

    He spent an embarrassing amount of time that afternoon trying to find out everything he could about Momo Tojigamori. According to her social media, in addition to being a business and computer engineering double major at Domino U, Momo was a budding entrepreneur who had already developed her own app. In the year since its release, 'Bossy' had already garnered a lot of attention as a professional networking app for women.

    And she was beautiful, just as Trudy had always said. _Or takes good photos anyway_. Many of her posts on PictureThis featured her hanging out with her friends, but some of her content was far more self-aware than Alistair would have expected. The most recent picture had been taken in front of a flashy gaming console. Her long dark hair had been pushed off her face by a headset, and she’d seductively pressed a controller against her pouty lips.

    ‘You’re right, I’m not a ‘real’ gamer girl,’ the caption read. ‘I’ve been too busy designing games to play them. This isn’t even my computer; I just built it for my brother.’

    It was as though someone had custom-designed a girl for Kaiba to date and it made Alistair want to throw his phone against the wall. Because as much as he wanted to tell himself that in light of their late night rendezvous, Kaiba couldn’t be interested in her, he knew no amount of rolling around in bed with him precluded the possibility that Kaiba might want to do the same with her. And if Kaiba’d finally agreed to meeting her, not to get Trudy off his back, but because he wanted to put his hand up her skirt, then he was probably looking at a picture of the future Mrs. Seto Kaiba.

    In a disingenuous bid to occupy himself with a more productive project, Alistair asked Mokuba if he knew of any extra laptops they might have lying around that he could appropriate. After expressing his horror that Alistair had gone the entire summer without a computer, Mokuba had directed him to the attic where they stored all their old electronics. Mokuba had referred to it as the ‘laptop graveyard,’ but after making his way to the stuffy top floor attic and taking a cursory look around, Alistair would have called it less a graveyard, and more a museum.

    Juxtaposed with the sloped ceilings and exposed woodwork that hearkened back to the mansion’s Victorian roots, the walls were lined with rows of computers and game systems, many of them stored in their original packaging. It had been ordered so neatly Alistair was certain Trudy had had a hand in the attic’s upkeep, even though it was markedly dustier than anywhere else in the house.

    Starting at the door, Alistair was able to take a tour through the history of the laptop dating back to the IBM 5100. As he drew nearer to the back wall, he’d begun to fear that while the trip to the attic had been interesting, it wouldn’t bear fruit. But then the number of machines began to pick up, going from one new model a year to two or three. The last shelves were full of computers from within the last five years, and some of them, Alistair was appalled to note, had never even been opened.

    Swallowing his exasperation at such a degree of decadent wastefulness, Alistair chose the most recent model, barely six months old, and exited the attic, taking a deep breath of fresh air after closing the door.

    After opening it and throwing the packaging to Sewell to play with, Alistair set the machine down on his coffee table. He plugged it into the nearest outlet and ostentatiously cracked his knuckles. He had a few skills that were worth dusting off if it meant expanding his employment prospects.

    Alistair had never had the zeal for computers that Kaiba had, but since he’d known that hacking would be pivotal in his quest to learn everything he could about his chosen adversary, he’d quickly picked it up.

     By the time he’d set up the computer and re-acquainted himself with some of his old software, he felt exhilarated. This was something that, like it or not, he was good at. He hadn’t designed an app, and he wasn’t graduating from Domino U, but he could get into Kaiba Corporation in less than an hour for his own private sneak peek at the goings on of Domino’s most influential company.

    He’d been surprised when the same tricks he’d used when working for Dartz still provided a back door into the servers. Had Kaiba been arrogant enough not to look into whether or not his company had been hacked by Paradias, convinced that Alistair must have been bluffing?

    In fact, Alistair was sure Kaiba would be appalled to discover how easy it was to gain access to his company. Not the important accounts, of course; he would have needed military level software to crack the encrypted Solid Vision files. But as his aim had never been to destroy Kaiba Corp from within, Alistair had been content with much lower hanging fruit.

    His first success had been a girl in the marketing department whose account had crumbled under the most basic of hacking methods: checking possible passwords against a dictionary. Second had been an older employee in HR who’d fallen victim to a forged memo, opening up a vulnerability in the word processor and allowing Alistair to ultimately gain remote access to most of HR’s shared data.  

    The hardest account to get into had been Roland’s. He’d had to tread carefully, knowing that if he made a mistake trying to hack Kaiba’s right-hand man, he risked opening himself up to Kaiba’s scrutiny, and no hacker wanted to be under Seto Kaiba’s microscope.

    In the end, he’d gotten lucky. After weeks of puzzling out a collection of possible names and numbers Roland might have combined into a password, Alistair had run a script to test them against the man’s personal email. To his delight, not only had he gotten a hit, he'd discovered that Roland had used the exact same password for his KC login.

    Roland had really been the key given his close relationship with his boss, and through him Alistair had been able to dog Kaiba fairly easily.

    Scrolling idly through Roland’s schedule for the day, Alistair reflected on how unnecessary his surveillance had been. All he’d had to do was beat Kaiba in a duel; watching Kaiba email his business partners was never going to have helped him achieve that goal. But for seven years he’d been unable to stop himself.

     _And here we go again_ , he thought, taking in the contents of a memo Roland had sent out that morning, reminding all employees to tune into the company video stream. Apparently, Kaiba had recorded a message regarding the construction of KaibaLand.

    Intrigued, he logged onto the marketing girl’s account after checking that her schedule placed her on a break, and copied the video to his own email before downloading it onto his laptop. Video announcements had always been something Kaiba had been partial to, Alistair assumed as a means of giving his employees the illusion of face-time. It was also easier to get away with being dramatic in a video than an email.

    Kaiba sat in front of the KC logo on his office wall, his hands steepled on his desk in the picture of dignity. The bulk of his speech indeed detailed updates on the KaibaLand construction schedule and deadlines that were being rearranged to accommodate the Grand Championship tournament. In the same dry tone, he announced that Yugi Mutou had agreed to duel the winner of the tournament and would, in effect, be representing Kaiba Corporation. Alistair was amazed that Kaiba could make the statement with such convincing indifference, as though his rival dueling in his stead was barely noteworthy.

    With both the boring and distasteful points out of the way, Kaiba spent the latter part of the video attempting to rouse the enthusiasm of his subordinates. In true, charismatic Seto Kaiba fashion, though he’d started off seated calmly at his desk, by the end of the video’s ten minute run-time, Kaiba was on his feet, his voice full of zeal and one fist clenched in victory as he reminded his workers of their role in the success of Grand Championship and KaibaLand.

    “This is not only a pivotal moment in our history as a company, but in each of your careers as well,” he said with gusto as though addressing a stadium of onlookers and yet talking to each of them personally. “Mediocrity has never been an option, especially now when we have a chance to show the world what this company is really made of! I’m counting on every single one of you to push yourselves beyond what you thought was possible so that come spring, your name can go down in history as a forger of the technology that has ushered in a new era of scientific progress!”

    Even though Kaiba gave a variation of exactly the same speech every time the company launched a new campaign, Alistair doubted that anyone noticed or cared. He didn’t even work for Kaiba and by the time the businessman had finished speaking, a triumphant smile stretched across his face, Alistair could feel excited adrenaline running up and down his spine like electricity. For all that he knew him to be sullen and reserved, Kaiba was a master public speaker, and it was no wonder he’d won over his father’s higher-ups with nothing but promises of glory.

    Not since Battle City had Alistair seen this side of Kaiba, and although his cockiness should have been repugnant as it always had been before, he now found it incredibly sexy. It was exactly this version of Kaiba, lit up by an aura of domineering confidence, that Alistair had always hoped would climb into bed with him. It was so easy to imagine being called into his office and wanting to get ravaged by him in his monogrammed leather chair in the hopes of being infused even for only a short time, with the essence of Seto Kaiba.

    Alistair closed the computer before he allowed his thoughts to stray too far down that road. He sat back on the couch and instead thought about himself. Was it really a surprise that Kaiba had lost whatever interest in him he may have had? He’d admitted to having no idea what he wanted in life, and spent much of the summer moping around and crying. When had he become that kind of person? As a member of DOMA, he’d harnessed his anger and used it as an energy source to help get him through the fatiguing years he’d spent training as a pilot, a hacker, a spy, and a duelist. Valon had regularly complained about the long hours Dartz had required them to pull, and the devotion he’d expected of them to their respective studies and missions. At the time, Alistair had scoffed at his teammate’s laziness and lack of focus, but now that the fire of his anger and hatred had been extinguished and he was left with shame and sadness, it was so much harder to push himself to do anything.

    Was that why he still had nightmares, he wondered. Did he have nothing else to dream about because a victim was all he’d ever known how to be? He absently reached up to toy with the stone that had hung around his neck for the past seven years. Despite having rested against the warmth of his skin, the Orichalcos shard was cold to the touch. Why did he even still wear it? He considered yanking it off, but for what reason? It was just a necklace now, and on some level he was still proud of it. Dartz may have been a fraud, but his message that for so many the world was rotten was no less true for it. He clasped the stone so that the sharp edge bit into his palm. He hadn’t been a victim when he’d worked for Dartz; he’d been a warrior, and even though he knew now that that mission had been misguided, what was to stop him from beginning another? He’d taught himself how to pilot a jumbo jet; he was more than capable of learning whatever it took to get him into university. And there he would be in a position to absorb even more skills that he could use to in some way try to create the world Dartz had promised was possible. And if he happened to impress Kaiba with his newfound determination, well, it wouldn’t be a wholly unwelcome by-product.

* * *

   “Why are you reading my old calculus textbook?”

    Alistair did his best to look up from his scrutiny of the definition of transcendental numbers as though he’d only just noticed Kaiba had arrived at the poolside.“Is it that late already?” Alistair stretched languidly and felt the fabric of his crop top ride up the already minimal part of his chest it had been covering. “I completely lost track of the time.”

    “Because calculus is so riveting? What are you doing?” Seto asked, taking in the strange nest Alistair had created out of towels around which several math and physics textbooks and a laptop had been scattered.

    “I’m buffing up on my hard sciences,” Alistair explained, propping himself up on his forearms. “I want to be properly prepared for when I take my college entrance exams.”

    “You want to go to college?” Seto couldn’t keep the amusement out of his voice at the thought of Alistair taking notes in a lecture hall.

    “Absolutely. I already know the basics of programming, so I’m thinking about doing a degree in computer engineering and maybe something else.”

    “I see. Well, you’ll need a better laptop; the SSD on that one isn’t good enough for coding.”

    Alistair had expected more of a reaction to his news and found himself disappointed that Kaiba seemed so uninterested. Shifting so that he was resting on the plushier part of the makeshift mat, he switched tact. “Oh, before I forget, I wanted to tell you what a great speech you gave today. I bet you even got a few cheers out of it. Very stirring.”

    Kaiba raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, Alistair, and frankly: I don’t care. Come on, get in the pool.”

    Alistair scrambled to his feet as Kaiba turned away.“You’re not even a little curious to know how I saw that video? Or how I know you dodged a meeting with Tanaka by rescheduling your conference call with Sapphire?” At last, he seemed to have struck a chord.

    “Ok, you’ve got my attention,” Kaiba said, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How’d you know that?”

    “Same way I found out you’re having Edwin pick up Momo Tojigamuri tomorrow at six. For such a huge tech company, some of your security policies are pretty weak.”

    To his credit, Kaiba looked more intrigued than insulted. “How?” he demanded.

    “Well, I don’t kiss and tell,” Alistair began cheekily. “Let’s just say that you might want to crack down on the password requirements.”

    At that, Kaiba at least had the decency to look surprised. But that was quickly replaced with amused scorn. “You hacked Roland’s account, didn’t you? And for a second I thought you might actually be talented. It’s clever, I’ll give you that. And he’s an idiot for having a weak password. So, congrats on getting the better of a fifty year old man who barely knows which end of his cell phone to talk into.”

    “Hey, everybody’s got to start somewhere,” Alistair shrugged.

    Kaiba looked taken aback by Alistair’s lack of abashment. “I suppose. Now, are we going to get in, or not? Because I’d just as soon go to bed.”

    “Sure thing, but...can I ask a question first?”

     "Make it quick."

    “Why aren’t you dueling in Grand Chanpionship? It’s not like you to pass up an opportunity to try and, ‘blast Yugi back to the minor leagues where he belongs.’”

   “That’s none of your business,” Kaiba said, his expression immediately hardening.

    “Look, I’m not trying to kick you while you’re down,” Alistair added hastily. “I just...I guess I just know that it probably wasn't a decision you were happy about.”

    “And what? You wanted to commiserate because we’re such good pals?” Kaiba seemed to consider him for a moment, his eyes studying him in a way that almost made Alistair giddy.

    “Yeah.”

    Kaiba stared at him intently and Alistair resisted the urge to look away even though being trapped under Kaiba’s gaze felt like getting x-rayed.

    “It wasn’t my first choice,” Kaiba admitted finally, his tone more tired than surly. “But shockingly, not everything is about what _I_ want.” He sat down at the edge of the pool and put his feet in the water.

    After a moment’s hesitation, Alistair rolled up his jeans and sat down beside him. The cold water against his bare skin was somewhat unpleasant, but he tried to ignore it. “I thought the whole point of being the boss was to be able to call all the shots.”

    “Calling the shots doesn’t mean I can just do whatever I want.” Had they been younger, Alistair was certain Kaiba would have added ‘duh.’

    “Oh. Well, would you duel if it was up to you?”

    “I don’t know,” Kaiba said thoughtfully, his eyes trained on the gentle rippling still running across the surface of the shifting water. “I’m not sure how interested in that I am anymore.” He laughed wryly. “I guess there’s more to life than Duel Monsters after all.”

    “Is that why you agreed to go out with Momo?”

    “What do you care about that?” Kaiba countered, and when he turned to look at him, Alistair was surprised to see how earnest his expression was, and realized how close they were to each other, their thighs only inches apart. So close that without much effort he could have brushed their fingers together. So close...

    The sound of his phone vibrating against the tiled floor startled them both, and Alistair whipped around in disbelief at Darren’s terrible timing.

    “Are you going to get that?” Kaiba asked, seemingly inspecting his fingernails.

    “It’s not important,” Alistair insisted, then wondered if that didn’t sound like he was hiding something. “This'll only take a second.” He swung his legs out of the pool and stood up, goosebumps rising on his calves.

    “This is kind of a bad time,” Alistair said after he’d picked up the phone. “I’m not mad,” he added quickly. “I’m just in the middle of something.”

    Darren was apparently so relieved Alistair had finally picked up the phone that he decided to ignore what he’d been told and barreled through what sounded like a semi-scripted apology. He denounced himself for not having checked Christian before it had all escalated, and for generally not being more sensitive.

    “Can I make it up to you?” Darren asked, and he sounded so sincerely sorry that Alistair decided to take pity on him.

    “Of course. We can meet up tomorrow at some point if you’ve got time. Get lunch at Twist or something.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kaiba get up.

    “Yeah, I’ll get you a thing of ridiculously overpriced french fries.”

    “You don’t have to buy me anything,” Alistair said exasperatedly. “I was drunk. I overreacted. But you know, we can talk about it tomorrow. Or not. I’m fine pretending it never happened actually. But I really--Kaiba, wait!” He immediately sucked in a breath, and Kaiba froze in the doorway of the changing room.

    “Kaiba?'” Darren asked in confusion.

    Alistair thought fast, his own horrified gaze locked with Kaiba’s. “Er...yes. That’s what I call my cat. Well, not _my_ cat. I’m watching my friend's cat. Anyway, I really have to go. I’ll text you tomorrow.” Alistair hung up the phone and flung it onto the nearest towel lest it cause more damage.

    “Your friend’s cat?”

    “I panicked!”

    “Whatever. It’s not like anyone would think you were actually talking to _me_. Still, I expected you to be a better liar since you imitated Pegasus so well. You didn’t even sound like you believed that yourself.” The criticism was light enough, but Kaiba’s tone had cooled considerably.

    “Easy for you to say,” Alistair grumbled, joining Kaiba by the door. “I was the one on the spot!”

    “Because of your own stupidity,” Kaiba sniffed, adjusting the sleeve of his wetsuit. “But go on: try me. Ask me three questions and I’ll answer two with lies and one with the truth. See if you can tell which one is true.”

    Playing any type of game with Kaiba was asking to be bested, but it was too tempting of an opportunity to pass up.

    “Alright. Why is the Blue Eyes White Dragon your favorite card?”

    “Because it’s rare and powerful,” Kaiba answered promptly. “Not a very interesting question, but that’s on you. Next?”

    “Did you always want to be a game systems developer?”

    “What are you, a journalist?” Kaiba taunted. “No. When I was about five I wanted to be a veterinarian because I found a baby bird in our backyard and took care of if overnight until my parents could take it to some wildlife sanctuary the next day. Next?”   

    Alistair hesitated. Did he dare ask anything he actually wanted to know the answer to? Granted, Kaiba would just lie, but then, knowing that, he’d have a better chance of winning the game.

    “Why did you agree to go out with Momo?”

    Kaiba grinned. “I told you: I’m starting to realize there’s more to life than Duel Monsters. And she’s interesting.”

    “How can you know that?” Alistair demanded. “Her app isn’t even that well designed!”

    “You’re out of questions,” Kaiba reminded him, his face returning to its resting mask-like state. “Go ahead: guess. Which answer was true?”

    Alistair considered. He found it hard to imagine Kaiba taking care of a baby bird. But then, Kaiba would know that he’d find that story unlikely which meant it was probably true. And if that was true, then it meant he’d lied about finding Momo interesting, which meant he’d agreed to the date for some other reason.

    “Don’t hurt yourself.”

    Ignoring Kaiba’s snark, he answered: “your story about the bird was true.”

    “Oh please.” Kaiba rolled his eyes. “Of course not. Here: I’ll save you the embarrassment of guessing wrong again. None of those answers were true.”

    “That...that’s cheating!” Alistair blustered.

    “You still lose. Anyway, I’m going to bed. If you decide to get in the water without me, try not to drown; I have too much to do to deal with that.”

    “Until tomorrow, then?” Alistair asked, unable to hide his desperation.

    “Probably not.”

    Alistair spent the next forty minutes propelling himself through the water with a jealousy he hadn’t known himself to be capable of. If only Darren hadn’t called right then, perhaps the night would have gone quite differently. Then again, if ‘probably not’ meant what he assumed it did, maybe not.   

   


	19. Momo Tojigamori

_“It started out with a kiss_

_How did it end up like this?_

_And it’s all in my head_

_But she’s touching his chest now_

_He takes off her dress, now_

_Letting me go.”_

**Momo Tojigamori**

    The last thing Alistair wanted to do the following afternoon was meet up with Darren, but it was better than sitting around at the estate pretending he’d be able to concentrate on anything other than the clock as it ticked steadily on towards six.

    By day and without neon lights to create the illusion of sheekness, Twist took on the dingy appearance of any dive bar, but because it was the only expressly queer cafe in the city, that didn’t seem to deter anyone from stopping in for a noonday hamburger.

    Darren had been seated at a booth beside the window, so Alistair didn’t have the option of a last-second getaway. Darren saw him at once, and waved rather sheepishly through the glass.

    Twist even smelled different during the day, Alistair realized when he entered under the fanfare of the tinkling bell. Cheap cologne and stale smoke were the two scents he most closely associated with the establishment, so it was with some surprise that he inhaled the pleasant odor of grilling meat.

    “Hey,” Darren began as Alistair shimmied out of his tight jacket and threw it over the back of the booth. “I was starting to think you weren’t gonna show up.”

    In truth, Alistair’s tardiness had been the result of a traffic jam on the highway, but considering he actually was annoyed with Darren, he kept that bit of information to himself.

    “Look: like I said last night, I’m really, really sorry about what happened.” Darren scratched a stubbly spot on his cheek and avoided Alistair’s eyes. “My friends and I, we like to think we’re really progressive, but obviously we screwed up there.”

    “I’m not sure what you’re apologizing for exactly.”

    “Well, I was thinking about it, and I think that because we’re all from Domino we can be a little up our own asses when it comes to certain topics, and forget that people from other places might think differently. And frankly, if anyone has the right to talk about objectification, it’s you, not any of us.”

    Alistair was about to ask why that would be when the cashier yelled to Darren that his food was ready, and by the time he’d returned with a tray of fries and two milkshakes, he seemed to think the apologizing segment of their meetup was over.

    “I meant to ask you what kind of milkshake you wanted, but I figured everyone likes chocolate.”

    Alistair thanked him and took the drink off the tray. In that moment, it occurred to him that Darren might consider what they were doing to be a date as much as an apology offering. The topic of whether or not there was any ambiguity in the nature of their friendship hadn’t been broached since Alistair had hooked up with Luke, and he intended for it to stay that way.

    “I was wondering,” he started, taking a sip of the milkshake. “What do you think it means if a guy you’ve been sort of involved with suddenly goes on a date with a girl?”

    He studied Darren’s reaction carefully and was relieved to see him immediately break into a knowing smile. “Uh oh. Sounds like you’ve gotten yourself into a classic 'down-low' situation. We’ve all been there. Frat guy, I bet.”

    “Frat guy? No, nothing like that. This guy…” he paused and tried to choose his words carefully. “He’s not usually the dating type at all. That’s why it’s weird. Especially since I thought that he and I….”. He’d never spoken to anyone about Kaiba before, but now that he’d started he found that it was a relief to voice his thoughts to someone who was in a position to give him better advice than he’d ever have been able to give himself.

    “This isn’t about some hook-up then, is it?” Darren asked sagely, taking a handful of fries. “You really like this guy.”

    “I guess, sort of,” Alistair admitted reluctantly. “I also live with him, so it’s complicated.”

    With Darren's encouragement, he spent the next ten minutes describing in the vaguest way possible how he’d come to be in his current position, explaining that he’d met his housemate through Duel Monsters and that even though they hadn’t gotten along particularly well, when Alistair had, though a series of events he chose to skip over, found himself homeless, his acquaintance had surprisingly taken pity on him and allowed him to stay with him.  

    “We kind of hooked up a couple of times, but mostly we didn’t have that much to do with each other. But then I accidentally caught him in a really private moment and I think that’s when something changed, especially for me.”  

    “Private?” Darren inquired.

    Alistair hesitated, then reasoned there was no way Darren would ever know who he was talking about, and with the assurance of anonymity, he told him about the night in the drawing room.

    “I thought he was going to kick me out that night,” Alistair concluded, swirling his straw around the melty remains of his milkshake. “ _I_ probably would have. But instead it kind of gave us an excuse to see more of each other and until this came up I’d started to think that maybe…”    

    Darren had sat through his explanation in relative silence, but as soon as Alistair finished, he pushed the now empty plate aside, and Alistair was surprised to see how serious he looked.

    “That’s a lot,” he said. “My ex had depression too, and just to give you fair warning: it’s exhausting. The ups and downs, never knowing which end of the spectrum he’d wake up on. And on the days when he was really down, like, sobbing on the floor of his dorm room after not eating for two days, I’ve never felt so useless. I was supposed to be able to be strong enough to help him through the times when he was like that, but I just couldn’t. And then I got mad at him for not letting me make him feel better, and he got mad at me for getting mad at him.” He looked up at Alistair from the table.

    “Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen in your situation; I don’t know this guy, and maybe he’s worked through whatever got him to that point, but it’s something you should probably think about. Because I think I would have been way more helpful to Matt as a friend than I was as a boyfriend.”

    Alistair could only stare at him. Despite what he’d witnessed, he hadn’t really thought of Kaiba as being depressed since he didn’t exactly lie in bed all day crying. And it definitely hadn’t occurred to him that Kaiba’s mental state should factor into his pursuit of him. But really, what did he know about what had driven Kaiba to cut himself that night? For all he knew, Kaiba had never done it before and would never do it again.

    “Anyway, setting that aside,” Darren continued. “This whole girl thing is messy. I mean, you get it, don’t you? Either he’s working through some self-denial thing or he’s trying to make you jealous so the pressure’s on you to make a declaration of love he’s apparently too insecure to make.”

    At the mention of the word ‘love,’ Alistair felt himself starting to flush. “I don’t _love_ him! I’m not even sure why I _like_ him.”

    “Eh, ‘like,’ ‘love,’ ‘lust’-- what’s the difference?” Darren asked with an air of one whose zen relationship to such things had been developed over years of experience.

     “So you don’t think this date he’s going on means that much?”

    “Nah. The worst that could happen is he sleeps with her.” At Alistair’s aghast reaction, Darren chuckled. “This is a whole new side of you. You're really upset about this, aren’t you? What does this guy look like? He must be some kind of Swedish supermodel.”

    “I don’t exactly carry a picture of him around in my wallet,” Alistair snapped, wishing he could press his burning face against the windowpane without drawing more attention to his embarrassment.

    “Wait, wait, wait.” Darren held up a hand. “Is this someone I know? Is that why you’re being so sketchy?”

    Alistair sat back in surprise. “No! I just...He just...I don’t have a picture, that’s all.” He knew he should have given a generic name and made a joking response about why he wouldn’t show Darren a picture, but somehow his mouth kept moving before his cunning could catch up. Kaiba had evidently been right to deem him a bad liar.

    Darren bit his lip and seemed to consider before asking another question. “Is this guy someone who wouldn’t want anyone to know he was seeing you? Like, is he married, or something?”

    This time, Alistair was determined to seize the opportunity for damage control. "No, he's not married, I told you,” he said flippantly. “He’s going on a date tonight. And anyway, I’m not being sketchy; I just don’t kiss and tell.” Had Darren not been witness to most of Alistair’s summer trysts, the excuse might have held water, and he could see even as he said it that the explanation left much to be desired, so he added: “and even if I told you who he was, it wouldn’t matter because you don’t know him.”

    “Why are you so sure of that?” Darren pressed. “You’d be surprised by how many people I know.”

    Alistair had had quite enough of the game of twenty questions and decided to settle on giving as close to the truth as was appropriate to get Darren to drop it.

    “He’s not a student; that’s why I know you don’t know him. He works for Kaiba Corporation.” Considering that a staggering percentage of the population was in some way in the employ of the company that was steadily expanding into a country-wide monopoly, it was hardly an identifying detail. Though Darren claimed to be satisfied with the answer, Alistair couldn’t help wondering if behind the new tangent Darren had gone off on about school, he was still thinking about it. _I’m just being paranoid_ , he told himself sharply. _There’s no reason for him to be that interested_.

    Mercifully, after another serving of fries, it was Darren who had to leave for a group project meeting. “Including the guy you claim you didn’t go down on in the Byzantium bathroom,” he teased.

    “I _didn’t_!” Alistair lied, his cheeks aflame all over again.

    Once he was left alone at the booth he decided to stay for lunch and ordered a hamburger. While he waited for it to arrive, Alistair mulled over the advice Darren had given him about Kaiba.

    Was he actually struggling with depression? He just couldn’t fathom that, not even after what he’d seen, not only in the drawing room, but across that entire day. Kaiba was strong and overconfident with the work ethic of a steam engine. What could possibly drag such a person that low? Granted, Kaiba was wound so tight it was inevitable he’d snap at some point, and perhaps that’s what that night had been: a slip. At least, that’s what Alistair had to assume as Kaiba had righted himself so completely since then, it was as if it hadn’t happened.   

    And was Darren right that he was going to have to come out and tell Kaiba how he felt? How could he possibly be expected to talk to Kaiba about his _feelings_? He could imagine with terrifying clarity stumbling through some kind of confession of his infatuation and Kaiba first staring at him with bemusement and then laughing at him as he had at Duelist Kingdom the first time he’d given an impassioned speech.

    What if he didn’t laugh, though? What if instead he took offence as he had when Alistair had kissed him that first time? Kaiba seemed to have drastically reevaluated that initial response, though the mortification Alistair had felt was still easy to recall.  But so were the memories of Kaiba’s hands sliding down his lower back before getting on top of him in bed, his disheveled hair falling across Alistair’s face as they kissed.

    Alistair shifted in his seat. There was no point focusing on that. Before he could even tackle how he wanted to approach a declaration of...any kind, he needed to get through the day and the maddening reality that after that night, Momo Tojigamori could be privy to similar memories.   

* * *

    Before meeting her, Seto had had only a vague impression of Momo as born out of Trudy’s description of her as a ‘nice girl’. In his imagination, the word ‘nice’ had conjured up a small, mousy creature, modestly dressed, and always obnoxiously neutral in opinion. But the young woman waiting on the stoop of a nondescript apartment building bore no resemblance.

    Her posture was the first thing he noticed. She was leaning against the railing checking something on her phone, but unlike the collapsed stance such an action tended to result in, she’d lifted up her phone so as to keep her back straight. The small detail gave him a glimmer of hope that the evening wouldn’t be as arduous as he’d assumed it would be.

    She looked up at the appearance of the limo and swiftly stowed her phone in the large purse perched on her shoulder. Jones emerged from the car to greet her and courteously open the back door, ending Seto’s voyeuristic observation of his evening’s companion.

    “Hi,” she said, sliding along the leather bench to sit across from him and bringing with her a scent that could only be described as ‘perfume’ as it smelled utterly unreminiscent of anything else and had probably been marketed as 'opulence' or some other intangible but expensive sounding noun. Her handshake was firm and the tips of her long nails dug into his palm.

    He decided that introducing himself to her would be redundant and settled for an amicable ‘nice to meet you.’ The fabric of her short pencil skirt had ridden up to expose an indecent amount of her thighs when she’d gone to cross her legs, and he tried his best to keep his gaze trained on her face.

    His expectation had been to sit in awkward silence and maybe answer a few emails on the ride back to the estate, but she’d quickly demonstrated that that wouldn’t be the case. She seemed uncowed by his fame and status, and instead, though he’d seen her look around at the various extras the limo employed, she spoke with the easy confidence and charm of a person worthy of his attention.

    “I wasn’t sure what to expect of the infamous Kaiba limo, and it’s definitely impressive, but the one I took to prom had a disco light.” There was a joking smile on her lips that compelled him to reply in kind.

    “That’s in the other car.”

    For much of the hour-long commute, he listened to her breakdown of how she’d come to be interested in video games, specifically hardware design, and her career aspirations. He gauged the quality of her answers as she described a controller prototype she was developing as her final school project, and deemed her to be, not revolutionary, but competent and hardworking. 

    “And at the end of the semester you’ll be graduating?” he clarified.    

    “Finally,” she answered, adjusting a long lock of black hair over her shoulder. “Now that I’ve really gotten to experience what it’s like to work in the trenches, it’s hard to get back into sitting in a classroom taking notes, you know? Not that I haven’t learned anything being at school, it’s just, I learned so much more at Google.”

    “I hear they’re developing their own Duel Disks,” Seto said with a smirk. “Have they had any success?”

    “You know full well I can’t tell you what they’re doing,” she chided, wagging a finger at him. “Granted, since they’re taking all their cues from you these days I doubt any of my intel would be worth much to you anyway. But, if you were really curious, I’m sure you could find a way around my NDA.” The quirk in her eyebrow and the naughty sparkle in her amber eyes left him in little doubt that an innuendo lay behind the innocent comment.

    When he’d told Alistair he probably wouldn’t be meeting him at the pool that night, he’d meant it as a disgruntled attempt to bring up any jealousy that would serve as an indication of Alistair’s lingering interest in him. Now, though, with the possibility of making good on that bluff presenting itself wrapped in such a compelling package, he wondered if it would be possible to have his cake and eat it too.

* * *

    Alistair’s intention had been to stay in his room so as to at least present the illusion that he didn’t care. But intentions are made to be betrayed, so by a quarter to seven, he’d renewed his hiding place behind the balustrade even though he knew if he were caught doing so he’d only make himself look pathetic.

    “You’re curious too, huh?”

    Alistair jumped. Mokuba, not usually so easy to detach from his game controller, had come up to stand beside where Alistair was crouching. Instead of his usual t-shirt and jeans, Alistair noticed Mokuba had donned a much more adult turtleneck and sweater combo.

    Not in a position to be making denials, Alistair admitted that he was. “Trudy’s basically made her out to be perfect, but we’ll see.”

    “Right?” Mokuba agreed. “She’ll have to be pretty amazing to actually get Seto to stay off his phone.”

    They fell silent when they heard the sound of the lock clicking. Alistair wanted to tell Mokua to duck down, then remembered Mokuba had no reason to hide.

    Before he even saw her, Alistair was struck by the fact that they were talking. About what, he couldn’t hear, but that Kaiba was interested enough to engage in conversation with her was enough to trigger a pang of jealousy.

    Presumably at Kaiba’s behest, she walked in first, and Alistair was dismayed to see that she looked just like her pictures. Long black hair fell in loose waves to the middle of her back, and the blazer and skirt she wore under her jacket clung attractively to her voluptuous figure.

    Kaiba appeared to be relaxed when he followed after her, and Alistair clenched his fist so hard he felt his nails cutting into his skin when Kaiba briefly rested a hand on her waist to direct her to the cloakroom.

    “Hey, bro!” Mokuba called, casually climbing downstairs to the foyer and leaning against the Blue Eyes statue. “And you’re Momo, obviously,” he added. “Trudy talks about you all the time.”

    The three of them meandered towards the dining room and out of sight, prompting Alistair to sneak around the back way to continue his monitoring of the date.   

    Inevitably, he bumped into Trudy in the kitchen.

    “Are they here already?” she demanded, trying to simultaneously adjust her hair net and flip one of two steaks sizzling on the grill.  

    “Yeah,” he informed her moodily.

    “Now, you, there’s no need to sound so bent out of shape,” she chastised him, her attention now completely focused on the steaks. “If I think of a girl that would be good for you, I’ll do the same. It’s just that she has so much in common with Seto. But she’s certainly not the only pretty girl in the--.”

    “I don’t like girls,” Alistair cut her off tersely. “So don’t worry about it.”

    “Oh!” Trudy had started at his announcement and burned her arm on the stove.

    “Sorry!” he apologized, rushing to the sink to turn the water on for her. “Are you alright?”

    “Yes, yes, of course; it was my fault,” she assured him as she allowed the cold water to run over the small blister that had risen on her forearm. Just as quickly, she was back at the stove. “When you say you don’t like girls...I suppose you...well I...I’ll have to look for a nice young man then.”

    “Don’t worry about it,” Alistair repeated, the sulkiness returning to his voice. “I’m not interested in any of that. Anyway, I didn’t mean to bother you; I was just cutting through. Unless you need any help?”

    “No, no. I’ve got everything covered. You might get me a bandage, though.”

    After bandaging up her arm, Alistair apologized again before stealing up the stairs to the small alcove that shielded him from the dining room but allowed him to get a glimpse of what was going on.

    Unlike when he’d spied on the PictureThis photoshoot and had only been able to see Kaiba’s back, Kaiba had placed himself across from Momo so that Alistair was able to see both of their profiles and more or less follow their conversation.

    “Don’t base your judgement of my talent on my laptop,” Momo was saying, her voice a sultry purr. “I’d have brought my real computer, but it doesn’t fit in my purse.”

    “I’ll take that under advisement,” Kaiba replied lightly as she set the small device on the table.

    Two sentences in and Alistair found he was already grinding his teeth.

    Mokuba hovered in the dining room for a few minutes before a look from his brother seemed to alert him that it was time to take his leave. He excused himself and ducked into the alcove on the pretext of asking Trudy something about the laundry.

    “She’s really hot, huh?” Mokuba whispered to Alistair, apparently unsurprised that he was there. “But we work with a lot of hot girls and I’ve never seen Seto pay attention before.”

    “He’s probably just being polite,” Alistair whispered back confidently just as Kaiba leaned across the table to get a better look at whatever Momo had pulled up on her computer so that their shoulders bumped together.

    Alistair had a sudden, vivid fantasy of the two of them posing together as some magazine cover power couple. Kaiba would be leaning against the hood of a sports car and she’d be leaning on him, one manicured hand on his chest and her leg kicked back. Little did Alistair know that Mokuba was thinking much the same thing, though the image got under their skin for opposite reasons.

    Eventually, Mokuba seemed to get bored, and when he made to walk back through the dining room to go upstairs, Alistair knew he too ought to return to his room or risk revealing more than he intended of his investment in the date’s outcome.

    He passed Trudy on the stairs and looked so dejected that she invited him to have a snack with her after she’d finished setting out the meal for Momo and Kaiba.

    “Yeah, alright,” he agreed, figuring it was better than brooding alone in his room.

    He’d never actually been in the small basement apartment Trudy and George had shared for the past twenty-five years. Since the kitchen was located right upstairs, the bulk of the main space had been converted to an airy living room.

    A squashy couch and matching armchair set in a light cream and pink floral pattern were set across from a small coffee table and within a comfortable distance from a stone hearth. The well-tended wooden floors had been overlaid with several throw rugs. One wall had been lined with large bookshelves while the other had been fairly wallpapered in framed photographs. A large television set harbored in the far corner had been set to a cooking show on low volume, and the hostess was explaining how to properly sauté mushrooms.

    On the other end of the room, a paper screen divided the main living space from a sink and countertop where an electric tea kettle stood at the ready.

    Aside from the countertop, every surface in the room had had a plant wedged into it so that the entire apartment had taken on a flowery, earthy smell. In addition to the living plants scattered throughout the room, a vase of pink dahlias and a lavender flower Alistair couldn’t identify sat in the middle of the coffee table, which had been draped in a crocheted table runner.

    Since he was as yet alone in the apartment, Alistair curiously approached the wall of photos. Trudy and George’s wedding picture hung proudly in the center. Her long hair had been dark then, though other than that, she looked much the same. George had been significantly thinner, his days of eating Trudy’s food still in front of him. They were both beaming, not at the camera, but sideways at each other.

    Other pictures featured members of their families dating back what appeared to be several generations. Some, though, were of the Kaiba brothers. The most recent was of Mokuba smiling broadly across an elaborate birthday cake alight with fifteen candles. Another was of a much younger Kaiba lolling against a helicopter emblazoned with the Domino Aviation Academy logo. He’d crossed his arms and smirked into the camera, an expression that on any other sixteen-year-old would have come across as comically try-hard.

    Sighing in annoyance that after the momentary distraction, he was right back to thinking about what was going on upstairs, Alistair flopped onto the couch.

    What if Darren was wrong? Things had seemed awfully cozy. The worst that could happen is that he might sleep with her, Darren had said, but in Alistair’s opinion, that was plenty. Granted, _he’d_ hardly stayed chaste since Kaiba had cut him off, but he’d never purported to think of his body as as sacred as Kaiba claimed his was. Hadn’t Kaiba said that he wasn’t going to be ‘had’ by anyone? This girl couldn’t possibly be special enough to be an exception. Could she?

    “I hope you’re in the mood for biscuits!” Trudy appeared at the bottom of the stairs with a tray of cookies balanced in her arms. “I know we shouldn’t be spoiling our dinners with these, but I assumed chocolate biscuits would be better pick-me-ups than leftover stroganoff.”  

    She carefully set the tray down on the coffee table, went around to the counter to turn the kettle on, and sat in the armchair across from him after retrieving two small plates.

    “I do hope you’re not worried about what I think of what you told me,” she ventured, her happy expression morphing into one of concern. “I was only surprised, that’s all.” She reached across the table to put a hand on his arm. “But I wonder if that’s not what’s bothering you.”

    Alistair was afraid that if he looked into her face he’d tell her everything, so he kept his gaze trained on the flower display.

    “Oh, I’m ok,” he lied with a small smile. “Just having an off day. Calculus is harder than I thought it would be.”

    The kettle burbled to a stop and Trudy went back around the divider to prepare two cups of tea. “I don’t suppose you had a chance to look at my picture wall,” she said, rifling through a nearby cabinet full of boxes and jars of tea.

    Grateful that Trudy appeared prepared to take his assertions about calculus at face value, he readily pounced on the new topic. “Yeah. Your wedding picture is really beautiful.”

    “I don’t know about all that,” she replied, though she sounded pleased. “But thank you. We’ll have to get your picture up there too.”

    “You don’t have to do that,” he protested modestly, although despite his bad mood, he was touched by the implication.

    “Nonsense. I’ll have to have you sit for me sometime this weekend before all these lovely leaves come down.” Her musing was slightly muffled by the rustling of the leaves she was measuring into a tea infuser. “I really need to get a new picture of Seto too,” she added. “I can always keep Mokuba up-to-date, but his brother is rather harder to pin down. In fact, I didn’t even take that one.” She indicated the photograph of Kaiba at the aviation academy as she returned to the coffee table with two delicate cups and a decorative china teapot. “It was one of his course-mates at the academy,” she continued, gesturing at Alistair to take a cookie while they waited for the tea to steep. “Pretty little thing, she was. Vivacious as they come and absolutely head over heels for him.” She took a cookie off the tray herself and forced it into his hand. He sheepishly accepted it and took an obligatory bite. It was predictably delicious.

    “I used to help cator for the academy events and she was always all but doing cartwheels in front of him, but he never noticed.” She chuckled. “He’s very smart, of course, but he’s still got to learn how to pick up on that sort of thing.”

    “He seems like he’s picking it up just fine.” Alistair set the remainder of the cookie on his plate and began dissecting out the chocolate chips.

    “My point is,” she went on patiently, pouring tea into their cups with a practiced hand. “I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some nice young...man doing cartwheels for you. And you’d do well to look out for it. Because you young people, you have these expectations of companionship that leave you chasing after all the wrong people. I understand it; I was as guilty as anyone of it as a girl, but after almost forty years with George, I can tell you that it’s much more valuable to accept the one who wants you than to force yourself to fit with someone who doesn’t.” She gave him a meaningful look that he did his best to avoid. “Now, stop torturing that poor biscuit and drink your tea.”

    Her advice might have affected him more had it been in reference to what had really been going on rather than what she evidently thought was happening. He was embarrassed that she saw him as throwing himself at an uninterested Kaiba, but while Kaiba had certainly never done any cartwheels, he’d at least looked at him with interest on occasion.

 _Did he, though?_ he questioned as he sipped his tea and pretended to listen to Trudy mull over having the kitchen repainted. What if it was Trudy and not Darren who was right, and any interest Kaiba had ever shown him had been the result of Alistair forcing himself onto someone who had merely given in to his advances out of convenience? Wasn’t that what Kaiba had always told him? Had he deluded himself into perceiving their interactions with each other of late as having been more intimate than they really had been?

    An even more sickeningly mortifying thought occurred to him: what if that was the reason Kaiba had always tapped out just before their romps had really turned serious? Had he seen how increasingly attached to him Alistair had unwittingly allowed himself to become and been repelled by it?

    Alistair wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh hysterically or cry, but sitting in Trudy’s living room with a cup of tea in one hand and a chocolate chip cookie in the other, he was unable to do either of those things.

* * *

    Two things had become apparent to Seto over the course of dinner. The first was that Momo Tojigamori was a sharp innovator and a savvy businesswoman, and the second was that talking to her was exhausting. The byproduct of which was that any notion he’d had of sleeping with her had been dispelled by the time they’d finished eating.

    The realizations had come as a result of a genuine interest in her input on the VR pods. Specifically, he’d been curious to hear her take on the as of yet unresolved issue of overheating that had been keeping him up all summer. He hadn’t supposed that she would be able to come to a solution that had eluded him for months, but he’d thought that a fresh mind would give him the opportunity to consider the problem from a different angle. In that regard he hadn’t been disappointed.

    After following along to his description of the motor design, her initial response had been the one his head of development had been advocating since the beginning: enlarge the framework to make space for bigger fans. Just as he had been preparing to offer his rebut that doing so made the pods too bulky, she’d gone on to make an observation that either no one in development had dared voice, or had been too close to the project to consider.

    “Honestly though,” she said, setting her fork down beside her empty plate and looking remarkably unapologetic. “I’m not sure how marketable they are in general anyway.”

    “Explain,” was all he’d trusted himself to say.

    “Well, these VR pods are being marketed as home gaming consoles, but even if you could find a way to keep them from overheating without making them any bigger, who has the space to keep something that size in their living room? And even if everyone did, who wants to basically lie in a coffin for hours just to play an RPG? If you want an immersive gaming experience, we have Duel Disks, and if you want a casual way to socialize at home, you can use either a traditional console or a PC. But that’s just one woman’s opinion,” she added, and the expression in her eyes, though still slightly teasing, was off-put by a small, triumphant smile.

    It was a look Seto was quite comfortable doling out, but rarely had directed his way. It was an invitation daring someone to prove him wrong. This girl was testing him, curious, no doubt, to see if his reputation was well earned. It was exactly what he would have done in her place.

    “I appreciate your input,” he said with a confident smirk of his own. He shifted forward in his seat and steepled his fingers. “But the software I’ve developed deserves better than to be thrown on the scrap heap just because the hardware hasn’t caught up yet. Perhaps a happy medium is in order. But then again, after experiencing the virtual world, I wonder if those people you claim wouldn’t want to clutter their living rooms with my coffins wouldn’t reconsider.”       

    She also leaned forward, and although he had never considered himself a master at reading facial expressions, Seto felt fairly certain that he knew what a smile like hers meant. “Is there an offer in there somewhere, Mr. Kaiba?”

    “Yes, actually,” he replied, looking directly into her face and pleased when she seemed hesitant to maintain eye contact. “After talking with you and looking over your resume, I’d like to extend you the offer of an internship in my development lab. If, as I suspect, you are able to assist in pushing this design forward, that internship can be extended to full time employment after you complete your studies. You’d be compensated for your work, of course, but I would understand if you wouldn’t have time to add a job on top of your no doubt rigorous schedule.”

    “Believe me,” she replied, running a hand through her sleek hair. “I’m used to working twice as hard as the rest of my classmates. Besides,” she added. “If you want to work in the big leagues, you’ve got to be willing to lose a little sleep, right? No one ever got anywhere without putting in the blood, sweat, and tears. Not my tears, obviously.” She giggled then looked at him more seriously. “But I might make your boys cry when they see how much more talented I am than they are.”

    “Guess we’ll find out.” The ‘girl power’ nature of her speech didn’t bother him. Whatever motivated her to get the job done. He didn’t like that she questioned the marketability of the project he’d been developing for the past three years, but working alongside a team of sycophants hadn’t yielded results; perhaps a bit of defiant ambition would.

    For he was in no doubt that this young woman had ambitions beyond the scope of the Kaiba Corporation development lab. She wanted the life that he had; he could see it in the hungry fire that lit up her face. Hiring such a person was a gamble, but he felt sure that it was a gamble he’d ultimately be collecting on. She had the ambition, and she seemed to believe she had the skills, but he had seen in the design of her game controller that she didn’t have the ingenuity to be a real threat to him. She’d plateau in a few years and he could replace her.

    In the meantime, he intended never to meet one-on-one with her again. She was beautiful, and she was smart, but she reminded him of himself which meant that in dealing with her it would be a constant battle to impress her, and he had no more energy for that, not when his life revolved around impressing people already.

    With the business aspect of their meeting settled, Seto had a much harder time keeping his focus on their conversation, his attention diverted by his phone, which he’d politely put on silent. Had he missed anything important in the past several hours? Likely not as it was now close on nine-thirty, but in this climate one could never be sure. And he needed to finish reading several reports, and hadn’t Tanaka sent an email to set up a meeting? What if he took a non-response as agreement? More than that, though, as ten O'clock loomed, he wondered if Alistair would go to the pool anyway.

    What would he say to him, though, if they indeed met there? Would Alistair ask about this, or would he act like it didn’t matter? And maybe it didn’t matter to him, not when he had some...connection in the city. Actually, was he even in the house? Maybe he’d gone to meet his friends, unaffected by whatever Seto might be doing at home.

    Momo seemed to sense that she no longer had his undivided attention and noted the lateness of the hour. She thanked him for his time and for dinner, but insisted that she ought to go home and he obligingly called for Alfred to bring the car back around.

    “As you can imagine, I rarely intervene in the hiring process of entry-level jobs,” Seto said as they waited, pulling one of his business cards out of his wallet. “So to get an actual internship contract drawn up you’ll have to go through our HR department. Tell whoever you speak to on the phone that Tim Michaud is expecting a call from you and you can set up a meeting with him. If they give you any trouble, have them call up to me.”  

   “Should I expect trouble?” she queried after accepting the card Seto slid her across the table.

    “No, why?” he asked, bowed over his screen as he typed a message to Michaud, green-lighting her internship.

    “Not to be blunt, but I don’t want to have to sleep my way into a job,” she said firmly, crossing her arms. “So if that’s what I can expect from this ‘meeting’ tell me now.”

    Seto’s head snapped up and he stared at her in total surprise. “Why would you think that?”

    She raised her eyebrows as though she found his confusion disingenuous.“I’m a woman who works in computer engineering and business; it’s practically a stock question.”

    “I would never run a company like that!” he assured her defensively, wondering if her assumption extended to him as well. _How dare she imply that I’m that kind of creep_ , he thought even as he realized there wasn’t much else to take away from his invitation not to his office or even a restaurant, but his own house. _But she was the one coming on to me!_ Though now that he played those moments back in his mind, he wasn’t so sure.  

      _No, she knew what she was doing_ , he reasoned as she shrugged noncommittally. _She wants this opportunity too much not to have considered doing whatever it took to get it_.

    They both heard the crunch of the limo tires on the circular drive and looked up as the headlights glanced off the dining room window.

    Their farewell at the limo door was amiable, but he noticed that much of her charm had evaporated over the past hour.

* * *

    Trudy had waited patiently for the limo to pull onto the street before pouncing on Seto when he walked back inside.

    “Well?” she asked, studying his face but unable to ascertain anything other than that he looked tired and serious, neither of which was an unusual trait.

    “I wouldn’t describe her as a ‘nice girl,’” Seto told her candidly. “But she will be a decent asset.”

    Trudy huffed in an indignant breath and swatted his arm. “You can’t go describing girls as ‘decent assets’! That’s terribly rude, not to mention--.”

    “I’m talking about for Kaiba Corporation,” he clarified, unabashed. “I’ve decided to hire her to help work on the VR pods.” He admittedly took some impish satisfaction from her consternation.

    “Hire her?” Trudy repeated. “What about date her?”

    “Oh please.” He rolled his eyes. “I have no interest in that. That’s why I told her to bring her resume and not her pajamas.” Before Trudy could respond, he continued. “Anyway, I have work to do. Thank you for dinner; it was very good.” He’d wanted to ask her if Alistair was still there, but changed his mind at the last minute. There was no reason he should care.

* * *

     The one thing Seto had underestimated when he’d started down the path of taking over Kaiba Corporation was the sheer amount of paperwork the job would require. Granted, calling it ‘paperwork’ was practically anachronistic as very little of it was on actual paper, but a lack of tangible files cluttering the surface of his desk didn’t mean he didn’t have a million things to do. If anything , having the majority of his job online made it feel even more never-ending.

    There was always a report to go through, a memo from this or that department with no less than three follow-ups to clarifying the first message, a constant barrage of concerns from the board, and now, with KaibaLand entering into the final stages of construction, multiple updates across the day that needed his attention.

    He’d brought it on himself, he knew. No one had clamored for him to step into the role of chairman of the board of directors in addition to his duties as CEO, but after the treachery of the Big 5 it had seemed more pertinent than ever to micromanage if he wanted to maintain absolute control over the company he’d fought so hard for.

    Being so hands on, while it did have its practical advantages, had slowly been taking a toll on him, though. And no amount of coffee could salve the strain of having the weight of an entire corporation on his shoulders.

    He should have been able to handle the Tojigamori girl better. Not let her get on such a moral high ground and put her back in her place. But he was tired. He couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t felt tired.

    Glancing wearily at his desktop clock, he saw that he’d only been working for a half an hour.

    “Screw this,” he muttered. And with a sudden rush of rebelliousness, he shut the computer down and packed his briefcase back up, already feeling more relaxed.

    He paused in the foyer, staring up at the second floor landing. Did he want to find out if Alistair was home? It wasn’t that much later than when they usually met at the pool--he could go upstairs and collect him. Make some snide remark about how Alistair was slacking.

    Or maybe Alistair was already down at the pool waiting for him, ready to call him out on his bluff. He could smirk and claim there had been no bluff, that Momo hadn’t been so interesting after all, but that he appreciated Alistair’s loyalty. ‘Like a dog waiting for its master,’ he’d say, and Alistair would huff and frown the way he always did when Seto teased him, and splash water at him, and his frown would curve upwards into a grin Seto refused to acknowledge he thought was cute.

    Just as easily as he conjured up the tantalizing image, he dispelled it. What was the point? Alistair had no investment in him. As soon as he had his documents and his license he would leave. Seto believed Alistair was an honest enough person that he wasn’t playing him on purpose, but what did his intentions matter if the outcome was the same?

    He lowered his eyes to the shadowy red carpet. Whatever. He’d always been better off on his own anyway.

    The pool was empty, causing him to bite back his dismay. Despite his forced thoughts to the contrary, he’d expected to see Alistair there.

    The soft light of the moon matched his mood better than the glaring electric lights, so he chose to leave them off, instead observing how the slight irregularities in the skylight brought out the whisper of movement in the water so that it appeared to pulse gently.

    He walked to the edge of the diving board and without hesitation, flipped into the pool. Though his wetsuit detracted from the full effect of the water, it was the best he’d felt all day. After a languid warm-up lap, he raced himself back and forth until, panting, he stopped at the edge. Breathing hard, he shoved his hair off his face and grinned at the thrill of the exertion. No matter that he’d hoped Alistair would be waiting for him, he had missed this.

    Kicking off from the side, he drifted towards the middle of the pool on his back and enjoyed the heavy silence, broken only by the thrumming of the water as it stilled. Here he didn’t have to be himself. Didn’t have to be anybody. Alone in the pool, he didn’t have to exist at all if he didn’t want to.   


	20. Ravensdale

  _“A bridge of silver wings stretches from the dead ashes of an unforgiving nightmare_ _to the jeweled vision of a life started anew_.” 

~Aberjhani, _Journey Through the Power of the Rainbow_  

 **Ravensdale**      

     San Francisco was overrated. It was a conclusion Seto had come to the first time he’d ever been there, but the sentiment had really been drilled in over the past twenty-four hours. He hated the unexpected heat of San Francisco’s deceptively autumnal season. In his opinion, there was nothing more unpleasant than being tricked into thinking the day was cool by the reds and yellows of the leaves visible through his hotel window, only to step out into seventy degrees.

    He hated the stop-and-go nature of the traffic up and down the steep roads, and he thought the Golden Gate Bridge was almost as tacky as the Eiffel Tower. Mostly, he hated that he always seemed to be forced to go there every time he and Pegasus had business. But most of all, he just hated Pegasus.

    The head of Industrial Illusions had had the audacity to offer him a guest room at his own house, an invitation Seto hadn’t even bothered acknowledging. Even if his door came with a deadbolt, he’d move Heaven and Hell before he’d spend a night with Pegasus.

     His chauffeur pulled up the the front of the I2 skyscraper and Seto took a moment to collect himself before getting out onto the steps. No matter what Pegasus said, he couldn’t allow himself to be rattled. He was there to negotiate a sponsorship contract they both knew he would sign which meant this meeting was just an excuse for Pegasus to trap them in a room together.

    The lobby was exactly as he remembered: all shiny panels and flashy, abstract decoration that made it look more like a sci-fi palace than a corporation, but then, Pegasus always seemed to have thought himself to be business royalty, so Seto supposed it fit.

    A panelled elevator took him to Pegasus’s main conference room. Unsurprisingly, Seto saw that he was the first one there. His business partner no doubt planned to put in an appearance only after Seto had had ample time to take in the predictably foppish decor. Buttery chocolate brown leather seats had been placed around a shiny mahogany table set upon a thin, intricately woven persian rug on display beneath protective glass. The lighting was provided by three dripping chandeliers, and the entire room smelled unpleasantly sweet in a way that made Seto’s stomach turn. He even went as far as putting his sleeve up to his nose so he wouldn’t have to inhale it until Pegasus decided to show up.

     As though he’d been waiting for a cue, the moment Seto reached down to pull his attache case onto the table, he heard the lilting voice of his business partner.

    “So sorry to have kept you waiting, Kaiba Boy!”

    Seto gritted his teeth before forcing himself to face him. Pegasus looked the same as always, his long hair artfully falling across the left side of his face. He’d even donned the same red suit with the stupid bow he’d been wearing at Duelist Kingdom. Seto wondered if that was on purpose.   

    Instead of sitting at the opposite end of the table, Pegasus pulled out the chair closest to Seto, who fought back the urge to shove the other man away when he felt Pegasus’s leg ‘accidentally’ rub up against his.

   “I hope you don’t mind, since we’re such good friends, if we get a little cozy,” Pegasus said, his remaining brown eye radiating innocence as he set a delicate glass of wine on the table beside him. Seto found it astonishing that the man could be so shameless considering their history, and yet Pegasus seemed not to remember that not so long ago he’d held Mokuba hostage and tried to take over Kaiba Corporation.

    Unwilling to play into the farce, Seto reminded him that they weren’t, nor would they ever be friends.

    “You do so wound me when you say such things, Kaiba Boy,” Pegasus cried with a dramatic shake of his head.

    “Let’s just get on with this,” Seto replied shortly, yanking the case open to retrieve the contract and flipping it in Pegasus’s direction.

    “Why the big rush; we see so little of each other as it is. Unless,” Pegasus mused, his eye seeming to study Seto’s face. “Unless you have a reason to be in a hurry. A reason that happens to have flowing blonde hair and--.”

    “I have nothing to do with Mai Valentine,” Seto interjected, annoyed with himself for having taken the bait. “But regardless, my private life is none of your business.”

    “Au contraire, Kaiba Boy.” Pegasus wagged a finger at him. “You seem to have made it the whole world’s business. All those salacious photos really had me clutching my pearls!”

    “Well I hope you can multitask, because while you’re clutching your pearls I need you to read this.”  

    With effort, Seto managed to keep Pegasus on-task long enough for them to actually talk business. He knew it was a trap, though, and was careful not to fall into a false sense of security. No doubt Pegasus was hoping to catch him off-guard with some inflammatory remark.

    “This is all very well,” Pegasus said, his heavy fountain pen poised over the contract. “But I would be remiss if I didn’t express my surprise that you’re not going to take this opportunity to try and finally trounce Yugi Boy. Or have you decided to give up the ghost?” He shot Seto a knowing smile.

    Seto felt himself bristle, but his time, he was able to shrug it off. Flashing a smirk, he replied: “That’s rich coming from an outdated joke like you.”

    The remark appeared to have met its mark. Pegasus frowned, the mischievous glint fading from his eye. “You’d better watch yourself, Kaiba; you came to me because you can’t get your little tournament off the ground without my help.”

   Seto glared at him, but Pegasus seemed to think his subtle threat was enough, and immediately fell back into a relaxed pose, his pentip once again hovering inches above the signature line.

    “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of you moving your little soiree here, is there?” Pegasus asked pleadingly. “I’d rather like to go, but the weather in Domino is just so dreary, and I’d hate to risk my complexion…”

    “We’ve already started construction on the arenas,” Seto reminded him, his fist tightening under the table.

    Pegasus made a little _moue_ of disappointment. “Ah well, perhaps another time.” His pen dove down to touch the paper, but was quickly picked back up again, leaving behind a small black dot of ink. “But then, I have to ask myself, as I’m not even going to be in attendance, what am I getting out of this investment? It is rather a lot of money…”

    Seto shifted irritably, his eyes on the pen, which Pegasus had rested thoughtfully against his chin. It was exactly this kind of drawn out interaction he knew his business partner relished, and exactly the reason Seto despised dealing with him.

    “What do you want?”

    “See that’s just the thing, Kaiba Boy: I need time to think about it--it’s a big decision, after all. But seeing as you insist on staying in some grimy motel rather than taking advantage of my hospitality, I think we’ll have to meet again in a day or two to really hammer it out.” He took a sip of his wine and looked at Seto as though to say: ‘your move.’

    “ _What_?” Seto’s nails were now digging into his palm. “I can’t just stay here indefinitely while you make up your mind!”

    “You’re absolutely right; what _was_ I thinking?” Pegasus drained the rest of his glass. Eyeing it wistfully, he added. “It’s such a pity we don’t have anything of real quality on site or I’d offer you some. Oh, but you aren’t old enough to drink in this country, are you?” He tittered lightly to himself when Seto glowered at him. “Tell you what. Join me and we can continue our discussion over dinner. It’s only fair that I host after so inconveniencing you.”

    Seto wanted to point out that no one needed to be inconvenienced if he would just sign the contract, but knew the logic would fall on deaf ears. This was clearly what Pegasus had had in mind all along, so he might as well get it over with.

    “Fine,” he agreed with pointed reluctance. “I’ll let headquarters know I’ll be gone another day. “

   “Excellent!” Pegasus explained, ignoring Seto's scowl and clapping his hands together. “I’ll call a chopper to take us to my humble home!”

* * *

     Alistair had never thought that of all the dramatic changes to his life over the past summer, not meeting Kaiba at the pool would be the one that would be the hardest to overcome, but he found himself missing the comradery he and Kaiba had developed through the activity. Their friendship had largely displayed itself in good-natured ribbing rather than deep, intellectual discussions, but it had been comfortable and he’d liked it. He liked Kaiba. It was no longer something he felt he could deny, nor did he want to.

    He liked that his self-doubt was so often met by Kaiba with surprise. It had felt good that Kaiba’d assumed he’d be able to learn how to swim easily even though it had turned out to be more difficult than he’d bargained for. It had pushed him to do his best so as to live up to the expectation Kaiba had of him to succeed.

    He liked that Kaiba indisputably knew who he was and unashamedly was who he was. And though Alistair didn’t always agree with it, he was also coming to understand Kaiba’s moral compass which seemed to be directed by two guiding principles: determination and honor.     

    Despite his machiavellian business facade, Alistair had never known Kaiba to relish such deviousness when it came to his company. Indeed, Alistair had seen him frown in distaste when his higher-ups suggested means of sabotaging rival companies.

    “Sounds to me like you don’t believe we can thrive without cheating,” he’d say, his tone sharp enough to make them flinch. “That may have been true under my step-father, but as long as I’m in charge, I assure you we’ll have no reason to sink so low.”

    Alistair sighed and rested the book he’d been attempting to read for the past half an hour beside him on the garden bench. It was unbelievably silly, not to mention embarrassing how often he had to shake himself out of trains of thought circling invariably around Kaiba. It was no better than the thousands of other people who no doubt daydreamed about him when they saw him on T.V. The difference, of course, was that no one else who fantasized about Kaiba lived with him. Not that Alistair had seen much of him lately either. Not since Momo...

    And there it was again. He huffed in frustration. If only he could know for sure what had happened, then he felt he could finally break free of it. Had Kaiba liked her enough to see her again or not? And if not, what did that mean for him? And why couldn’t he force himself to focus on something, anything else? It wasn’t as though he had nothing better to do.

    His plan that day had been to work through the calculus set he’d gotten from Mokuba, but after wrestling through the first few equations, checking them against the answer key, and getting all of them wrong, he’d decided to take a break. He could have Mokuba run his mistakes by his tutor the next day, but until then, Alistair had had quite enough of it and had gone out to the garden to rest his mind. At least, that had been the idea.

    Over the past few weeks, the garden had fully sloughed off the greens and pinks of summer in favor of the earthier palette of autumn. Alistair’s willow burned a bright yellow in the late afternoon sun, still warm enough to justify the thin jacket he wore, though the cool breeze warned that such days were coming to an end.

    Alistair looked up at the smell of imminent rain and saw that the fluffy clouds had turned gray as they passed across the sun. Not wanting to get caught in what would likely be a sudden if brief downpour, he scooped up his book and ambled back to the house, his boots crunching over fallen leaves.

    No sooner had he walked onto the covered back porch than cold rain began pelting against the ground, instantly darkening the concrete pathway.

    The deluge had begun so unexpectedly that none of the lights had been turned on, leaving the lower floor in relative darkness. Careful to avoid the library where he could hear Mokuba flipping through one of his textbooks as he attempted, no doubt, to complete homework left until the last minute for his Monday lessons. Rather than give him more reason to procrastinate, Alistair snuck upstairs to his room.

    The calculus book he’d left open on the coffee table made him frown and he quickly looked away from it. Sewell, who usually raced to greet him when he opened the door, glanced at him before returning to her intense scrutiny of the raindrops dripping down the french doors of the balcony.

    He deposited _Wuthering Heights_ on the bed and joined his cat, crouching to scratch her behind her ears. She purred and lifted her head up so he would scratch under her chin as well. Through the glass, Alistair could see that the sky was already clearing in time for sunset. He glanced down at his phone screen and saw that it was almost dinnertime. Normally, that would mean going down to the fridge for leftovers, but that morning Trudy had unexpectedly asked him to have dinner with her and George in their apartment. Her mysterious invitation had left him intrigued, but he was apprehensive that it might be an ambush-style intervention.

    Ever since revealing his romantic leanings to her, Trudy had taken to bringing up statistics about hate crimes and anti-gay public sentiment over breakfast. He knew her intentions were good, but it wasn’t a topic he found nearly as interesting let alone as worrying as she did. Just that morning she’d told him he should consider a shorter haircut.

    “It’s a shame since you have such lovely hair,” she’d lamented as she was collecting the dishes. “But you never know what these hooligans might pick up on. And please, Alistair, whatever you do: stay away from that _Byzantium_ place downtown--I was just reading about what kind of nonsense goes on there; it’s no place for a nice boy like you.”

    Still, even if he had to listen to her well-meaning smothering for an hour or two, he’d never turn down a specially cooked meal, especially when she was going to the trouble of making it for him on her day off.

    In preparation, he got up and went to the closet to change out of his jacket and tank top in favor of a long-sleeved shirt he knew she’d be more likely to approve of.

    “I’ll let you out when I get back,” he promised Sewell, who, with no more raindrops to stalk, had threaded herself between his ankles.

    When he met Trudy at the top of the stairs a few minutes later he was surprised to see nervous anticipation on her face. The mystery intensified when he saw the same emotion in George when Trudy seated him across from her husband at their small table.

    “How are you, Alistair?” George asked with such earnestness that Alistair wondered if he looked ill.   

     “I’m fine,” he replied with a questioning glance at Trudy, who was making a show of pouring everyone a cup of tea. “And Trudy: I know you’ve been worried about me, but I promise I’m not being reckless.”

    “Reckless?” George inquired, though even as he said it, his confusion seemed to clear up. “Oh, you mean the gay thing. Trudy told me about that, I hope you don’t mind. Personally, I think it’s fine.” He took a sip of tea as Trudy set about slicing up the meatloaf that had been cooling on the counter. “These days, it seems like everyone’s gay. I wouldn’t mention it around Seto, though,” he added thoughtfully. “I know how he feels about that Pegasus character he went to see.”

    Alistair couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “Sorry, yeah, you’re right. I’ll keep that in mind.” He composed himself. “So what _is_ going on? Is something wrong?”

   George glanced over at his wife, and after she’d laid a plate of food in front of each of them, she sat beside him. When she turned to Alistair, she was smiling even as he could see nerves just beneath it, leaving him even more bewildered.

    “First of all,” Trudy began, placing a hand on her husband’s arm. “I want you to know that George and I have become very fond of you, and that we’re so happy to have you in our lives.”

    “That’s really nice of you to say,” he replied with a bemused smile. “But honestly, I should be saying that to you. You’ve both really made me feel welcome here.”

    “I’m glad you feel that way,” Trudy said, her eyes suddenly growing misty. “As you know, we don’t have any children.” She paused and Alistair saw George’s hand tighten over hers. “And so,” she went on, her voice more tremulous, “when Seto told me about the situation with your passport, George and I talked it over. And now, we understand if you wouldn’t want to, of course, but we wanted to offer you the choice.”

    Alistair wanted to be able to share in the emotional moment, but he was perplexed. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about,” he admitted, looking back and forth between them. “What about my passport?”

    Trudy stared at him in confusion. “I mean about how the Migration Agency might look into your background since you’re from across the border and all. Didn’t Seto explain this to you?”

    “No, he didn’t.” But even with that much information, Alistair was starting to get an inkling of what was going on, and it made him feel a rush of warmth in his chest that he tried to force back down until he was absolutely sure.

   “Seto knows someone who could backdate some adoption papers for you,” George clarified. “So your passport would be legal.”

    “Oh, George,” Trudy exclaimed, pulling her hand away so she could swat his arm. “That’s not how I wanted to ask.”

    “Wait, you’re saying you want to adopt me?” Alistair clarified, the warmth he’d felt lapping once more at his heart. “Or, well, to have adopted me?”

    “Only if you would be comfortable with that,” Trudy said quickly. “After all, you haven’t known us that long, but when Seto said it would make your paperwork easier to...process, it seemed reasonable to us, and, well, as I said: we really are very fond of you. See, look: I’ve just gotten your photo up this morning.” She pointed at the picture wall above the sofa and Alistair saw that indeed she’d added the picture she’d taken of him that past weekend sitting amongst the autumn leaves under the willow, Sewell, who’d been plied with small pieces of fish, flopped down at his side.

    “You think you might want to be a Ravensdale?” George asked, grinning broadly.

    “I...Yeah. Yes. Yes, I would,” Alistair finally managed to answer, getting up to hug them each in turn. “Thank you.”     

    “As though it’s a favor to you rather than us,” Trudy chastised him, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin.

    “Alright now,” George said, sitting back down. “I suppose there are some details to be worked out, but no need to do it on an empty stomach!”  

      On some level, he'd known that what he wanted most was to have a family again, and yet, now that he was being welcomed with open arms by people he’d come to care about, Alistair couldn’t help but find it bittersweet. It wasn’t a betrayal of his mother and father to adopt Trudy and George as a second set of parents--it was merely an addition. And exchanging his last name for a new one didn’t mean he wasn’t proud of where he came from. But he could feel his ties to his homeland, already frayed and worn from the years he’d been away, finally breaking. He wasn’t sure why it all made him feel so melancholy. Even if he were to go back, it wouldn’t be the home he remembered.

    He had watched his village burn. Watched in horror with everyone else as the flames pooled out across the thatched roofs, casting leaping shadows across the cobbled streets. Most vividly, he remembered looking in befuddled fascination at the smoke seeping from between the stones of the nearest building and wondering if they would catch fire too.

    But there had been happy memories too, of playing football with the other children in the field behind their school, of exploring the cave system just beyond the village, of wrestling his friends in the snow. All the blurred, mundane experiences of any other child. But now there was no one else left to remember Old Man Callum who’d give out squares of chocolate in exchange for feeding his chickens, no one but him who knew how the crack in the town hall door had been the result of the Dunaid boys teasing and subsequently being chased by a steer, or how the Menzies’ oldest daughter had once threatened to throw herself off the mountain peak if her parents didn’t let her marry Rory de Paor.  

    He wasn’t giving up those memories by becoming Alistair Ravensdale; they would fade or stay no matter what he did. But even though he’d left that life behind seven years ago, this was what felt like the end. He really wasn’t that boy anymore, he was someone else entirely. It was different and sad, but maybe it was ok.

    It wasn’t until long after dinner when he was lying in bed that it sank in that the one who’d initially raised the possibility of Trudy and George adopting him had been Kaiba.

    Alistair smiled and burrowed more comfortably under the blankets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, sorry for my short hiatus, but I'm back!!! 
> 
> Don't fret about the lack of interaction between our protagonists this chapter--the next few will solve that deficit ;) 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed Pegasus's cheeky little cameo ^.^
> 
> Side note: I have nothing against San Francisco, but I can imagine Seto hating it on principle since he always has to go there to deal with Pegasus.


	21. Red Tape

" _Try to make it look like it's all somehow getting better_  
_'Cause I know how to play it pretty good against the measure_  
_Everyone started out a little insane_  
_But we learn pretty quick how to fake it for the game_

_We all know what's going on."_

Icon for Hire,  _Make a Move_

 **Red Tape**

   No amount of soap would be sufficient to cleanse him of the evening he’d had to endure, but Seto made a good attempt of it when he finally woke up the next day. Steam seeped from over the shower stall as he vigorously rubbed body scrub over his skin.

    From the moment they’d landed on Pegasus’s private island at the doors of his sprawling estate, Seto had known it was a trap.

    Twittering about the nightmare of his recent renovations, Pegasus had bodily steered him through the white marble foyer to a dining room overlooking the ocean, laughing and commenting on how skittish he was when Seto flinched away.

   Gritting his teeth, Seto reminded himself of the importance of staying in control during this encounter. Pegasus was a slippery one, but nothing he couldn’t handle.

    No sooner had Pegasus sat them across from each other than one of his omnipresent servants came in to offer their boss a white wine spritzer.

    “And for you, sir?”

    But before Seto could respond, Pegasus had answered for him.

    “He’ll have the same. Don’t worry, I won’t tell if you don’t,” he added with a wink when Seto began to protest. “Unless of course you don’t think you’ll be able to behave yourself.”

    One glass of wine had been followed by several more over the course of the meal as Seto found himself obliged to go shot for shot with his host lest Pegasus tease him for being a lightweight.

    The alcohol hadn’t trickled through his veins so much as seemingly replaced the blood in them all at once after the fourth glass, and Seto, unaccustomed to the feeling, had had to grip the table to keep the room steady. All the while, he’d pretended to pay attention as Pegasus lilted his way through a dozen topics Seto couldn’t have cared less about including a scandal about some American politician getting caught with a mistress from across the border.

    “Look,” Seto interrupted him, the wine making him uncomfortably hot despite the breeze blowing in from the balcony. “I’ve played your little game, now can we get back to the contract?”

    “Can’t all the business talk wait until after dessert?” Pegasus asked with a slight pout. “I did have my cook go to the trouble of making you a cake, after all. I’d hate to have it overshadowed by such dreary paperwork.”

    “A cake?”

    “Isn’t it your birthday? I’m so honored to be the one getting to bid farewell to your teenage years with you. _Salut_ e!”

    Finally, after Seto’d forced down a piece of the fondant-coated cake, molded to resemble the Blue Eyes Toon Dragon, Pegasus agreed to sign the sponsorship contract.

     “What an occasion!” Pegasus said with a jovial wave of his hands. “The two of us working in harmony! Why, it’s just like old times, isn’t it, Kaiba Boy?”

    Seto wanted to point out that the only ‘old times’ they had together were as enemies, but he didn’t trust himself to speak. The wine, it seemed, had sunk through his veins and down into his bones, turning them to lead so that his jaw was far too heavy to move. And the room seemed to have become a furnace since they’d sat down, long, rippling ribbons of heat snaking up and down his body. He longed to rid himself of his stifling trench coat, but he couldn’t lose himself so completely in front of Pegasus.

    He forced himself to steady his gaze on his business partner who had retrieved another heavy fountain pen from somewhere and was at last finishing off his loopy signature with a flourish.

    “There you are, Kaiba Boy,” he singsonged. “Looks like we’re partners! But oh.” He looked at Seto with exaggerated concern. “Are you not feeling well? Too much wine perhaps?”

    “I’m fine,” Seto barked at him, lurching across the table to snatch up the contract before Pegasus could hold it for ransom. “Anyway, I have nothing else to say to you, so I’m leaving.”

    He stood, his movements so clumsy he rammed his hip hard into the side of the table, but though he barely felt it, the motion knocked him off balance and he had to catch himself by slamming his hands onto the surface, the contract scrunching against the edge.

    It had been a trap. He’d known that. Why, then, had he fallen into it?

    If the room would stand still, he’d be able to think more clearly, but it stubbornly continued to wobble until he realized too late that it was he who was swaying.

    “Take me back to San Francisco.” Each word was a tremendous effort, but he managed to force the message through his uncooperative mouth.

    “Are you sure it wouldn’t be better to sleep it off here?” The teasing inflection was gone from Pegasus’s voice. It was the closest Seto had ever heard to concern from the man. But seeing as it was Pegasus’s fault he’d gotten so drunk in the first place, Seto was unwilling to give him a pass.

    He didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes until they snapped open when Pegasus tried to hoist him upright, his arm sliding around his back.

    Seto shoved him away, almost tripping over his chair as he jerked backwards. “I can take care of myself! Just get me off this island. _Now_ , Pegasus!” he added when Pegasus made no effort to jump to do his bidding.

    The short flight back to the mainland and subsequent ride to his hotel were a blur of purring engines and flashy neon lights and two hastily chugged bottles of water. Then he must have fallen across his bed because that’s where he found himself the next morning, still in his clothes from the day before.

    Seto paused in his furious attempts to scrub the lingering, flowery smell of Pegasus’s house off of him to massage his forehead. He’d awakened with a piercing headache he’d immediately medicated for, but the tablet he’d swallowed had either not yet taken effect or hadn’t worked. He felt almost feverish, each movement resulting in a wave of nausea that seemed to shoot up through his stomach before exploding in his head. Why anyone would purposefully want to subject themselves to such tedious and awful pain he couldn’t begin to guess.

    He stayed in the shower until the warm water did more to exacerbate his feelings of nausea than alleviate them before getting out and reluctantly reaching for his phone. No doubt his side trip had caused him to fall behind. He glanced over at the rumpled sheaf of papers he’d flung across the suite’s desk. At least he’d gotten what he’d come for in the end.

* * *

    “He usually takes his birthday off, but I guess Pegasus held him up,” Mokuba said when Alistair inquired into Kaiba’s extended absence from the estate.

    The mundane explanation was probably true, but Alistair nonetheless found it puzzling. Letting Pegasus derail a business deal seemed out of character for the man who adamantly asserted control over his life. As with the PictureThis incident, was this an indication something was wrong?

    Several times, Alistair’s gaze was drawn to his phone and he considered calling if only to be gruffly told he’d overstepped his bounds by presuming he had permission to do so. Just to get a sense of if Kaiba was alright.

    It was exactly what he’d been told not to do when he’d stumbled across Kaiba cutting himself; to not dare assume a right to familiarity. But after the experiences they’d shared that summer, Alistair couldn’t do that.

    He flipped the page in his physics textbook to examine an acceleration graph, though his eyes soon strayed back to his phone. It really wasn’t any of his business. He returned to the book and tried to focus on the author’s assertion that the beauty of the subject was in its mathematical cryptograms, but the possibility of talking to Kaiba remained more alluring.

   It wasn’t until the phone was in his hand, his thumb hovering over the call button that he finally came to his senses and put it down. Calling Kaiba would achieve nothing except revealing more than he cared to of his own feelings.

    Darren had warned him against letting Kaiba force him to always be the one responsible for establishing where they stood with each other. Trudy had said as much too. But whatever other mixed signals Kaiba had ever displayed, giving him a family, knowing that it was what Alistair needed and wanted more than anything, had been the kindest thing anyone had ever done for him. And it was completely selfless. Kaiba gained nothing by getting him adopted by Trudy and George, and in fact, in doing so, he cemented Alistair as an extended part of his life.     

    Unless...was that the point? Was it Kaiba’s incredibly elaborate, roundabout way of telling him he wanted him to stick around?

    Probably not.

    Putting it to the back of his mind, Alistair worked diligently through the rest of the chapter on acceleration and even completed the review questions at the end with a degree of accuracy that left him feeling quite proud of himself. Self-study was surely not the easiest method of learning physics or calculus, but after all the effort he’d exerted with some indirect help from Mokuba’s tutors, he was starting to not only understand what he was reading, but develop an unexpected interest in it. So much so that there had been occasions on which he’d reached for the physics book over whatever novel he was working through to re-read certain sections.

    His determination to prep for the college entrance exams slated for that December wasn’t something he expected any praise for, but now that success actually seemed possible, he looked forward to it. He was going to do well, and on his own merit, he was going to get himself into Domino University so that for the first time in his life, he would have something that was his. Something he’d earned with no help from anyone. And maybe then the despair he always seemed to be staving off would heal and he could make his family, both new and old, proud.

    It was while riding his study high that Alistair ambled out of the library intent on going for a relaxed swim before dinner. He realized after only a few steps that Kaiba was back. He could hear him talking to Mokuba, though their voices became increasingly distant as they walked up the foyer stairs to the second floor.

    Alistair peeked around the corner in time to catch sight of them disappearing into Kaiba’s home office, but he was too far away to gauge Kaiba’s mood.  

    His policy for dealing with his host was largely to stay out of his way outside of their poolside meetups, and then, after their cancellation, to hide from him altogether, but in that moment his academic accomplishments left him feeling his oats enough to meet Kaiba head on.

    As he approached the open door, his confidence wavered, but he forced himself to complete the journey.

    “Welcome home,” he said rather snidely, leaning against the doorframe.

    Kaiba was seated at his desk while Mokuba lounged against the corner of the sofa, scooted far enough forward that his feet touched the floor. Kaiba looked more tired than usual, his normally sharp blue eyes dulled by fatigue.

    “I wondered how long it would take you to slither out of the woodwork,” Kaiba replied, though he didn’t sound especially annoyed to see him. “What do you want?”

    “I wanted to talk to you.” He’d tried to imply ‘alone,’ but he’d either been too understated or both Kaiba and Mokuba chose to overlook it because neither of them stirred. With both brothers looking at him expectantly, he felt himself starting to flush, and cleared his throat. “I just wanted to let you know that Trudy and George told me about your idea.” He saw the siblings exchange a subtle glance and suddenly wondered if the plan hadn’t actually been Mokuba’s. His blush darkened as he grasped his own foolishness.

    “I assume you’re interested,” Kaiba said so matter-of-factly it was impossible to decipher how he felt about it.

    “Yeah.”

    “That’s so cool!” Mokuba clapped his hands, and his smile seemed to confirm Alistair’s suspicions. “I bet they were really happy.”

    “Well, it was incredibly generous of them.” But Alistair was looking at Kaiba, not Mokuba. He thought he saw satisfaction in Kaiba’s eyes, but then they fell flat again.

    “Is this your way of saying ‘thank you?’” Kaiba asked, and this time, Alistair was certain he saw a trace of mirth in his expression.   

* * *

     In an ideal world, Seto would have gone to bed after running Mokuba through the relevant details of his time in San Francisco, and skating over those that he was happy to have sink into the Pacific. Unfortunately, no one else seemed to grasp how little he wanted to interact with anyone. Trudy insisted that he come down for dinner because she’d made him a birthday cake, Mokuba, much clingier than he’d been of late, seemed determined to share every detail of his life from the past forty-eight hours, and then there was Alistair.

     It had been brazen of his houseguest to intrude on his meeting, but he’d liked the implication that Alistair had missed him enough to come running the second he walked through the door. It had been clear Alistair would have preferred Mokuba not to have been in the room, and that pleased him. Liaisons with Domino U students notwithstanding, Alistair did apparently, to some extent, care.

    “My goodness, twenty years old already,” Trudy commented as she cut into the cake, decorated with elaborate chocolate swirls. “How time flies.”

     Had Trudy not been the baker, Seto would have begged off after the awful cake he’d had with Pegasus, but nothing was going to stand between him and anything his housekeeper had cooked. Especially not one of her cakes. She’d make one for him anytime he asked, of course, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit to her how much he enjoyed them.

    “Yeah, how does it feel not to be a teenager anymore?” Alistair asked with a teasing smile as Trudy sliced pieces for everyone else. “Mokuba and I must look like little kids to you.”

    Mokuba snorted into his mouthful of cake to which Trudy shot him a disapproving look, but didn’t comment. Seto too felt no need to rebut, and focused instead on his food.

    He was pleasantly surprised when after dinner Mokuba suggested they play a game together. If Alistair was insulted he hadn’t been invited to join, he didn’t show it, and mumbled something about calculus before retreating to the library.

    It had been quite some time since Seto had actually set foot in their gaming room, but aside from having added a few new machines at some point and installing a collapsible surface for tabletop games, it was exactly as he remembered it. His surprise that the room seemed largely unchanged pained him. Had it really been so long since he and his brother had played anything together?

    “What’re you in the mood for?” Mokuba asked, standing in front of their collection of multi-player games. “I’ve bought a bunch of new ones.”

     _To play with your friends_ , Seto thought. _Not with me_.

    He hadn’t meant to make himself so inaccessible; it was simply a byproduct of His Job. God, he really hated His Job. It had gotten in the way of just about everything he’d ever thought was good in his life. His relationship with Mokuba, excelling at Duel Monsters, and most recently, his one day off. It even got in the way of doing the part of his job he did like: design. When was the last time he’d had time to sit down with a new invention? One month? Five?

    “You can pick whatever you want,” he said, and had Mokuba been more perceptive, he might have picked up on how wistful his brother sounded.

    “I’ve been meaning to ask you, since you’ve been so quiet about it: what about you and Momo?” Mokuba inquired slyly as the fantasy fighting game he’d loaded booted up.

    “There’s nothing to say,” Seto told him truthfully. Since the day he’d offered her an internship, he’d thought nothing more of her. Mokuba, however, didn’t seem to buy it.

    “That’s all I get?” Mokuba protested. “Come on, when are you going to see her again? You should invite her over for dinner and I can invite Hillary.” There it was. Mokuba had no interest in whether or not he saw Momo again; he wanted to talk about his own girlfriend.

    “I’d rather you didn’t have her over at all.”

    The dopey expression of contentment on his brother’s face vanished immediately as in the background, the game’s aggressive rock soundtrack kicked in.

    By and large, Seto considered Mokuba his equal, and if not his equal, his responsibility. But underneath all that, they were brothers, and something about Mokuba’s preoccupation with his own life and Seto’s bitterness at not only not having one of his own, but being relegated to a side character in his younger sibling’s fantasy world made him want to remind them both who really held the power.

    “Are you serious?” Mokuba’s hands tightened around his game controller. There was no underlying, childish whine, but angry disbelief.

    “I’m not saying you can’t; I’m saying I don’t like it.”

    “You’re jealous.” The accusation was warranted, and Seto knew he deserved it. And at last, it felt like he and Mokuba were going to have the conversation they should have had long ago.

    “Maybe.”

    It was so obvious that was what Mokuba had been waiting to hear it was almost comical. At once, his manner softened, and all the resentment he’d been emanating for months vanished.

    The game prompted them to start, but instead, Mokuba absently turned the sound off, the look he gave Seto one of compassion rather than spite.

    “You don’t have to be,” Mokuba said earnestly. “I mean, I understand you think you don’t have time, but you would if you didn’t work so much. Why do you anyway? It’s not like we need the money.”

    Seto reached over and hit ‘start’ on Mokuba’s controller, immediately pulling up a character menu. By and large, the cast was made up of scantily clad women with impossible bust to hip ratios, and muscular men who seemed to think their hulking biceps would shred any shirt they tried to pull over their heads.  

    Quickly assessing their stats, Seto chose a female character brandishing a bullwhip, an indication to Mokuba that if he wanted to get him talking, it was going to be over a few matches. Obligingly, Mokuba selected the title character with a heavy sword the width of his torso.

    “If I didn’t do everything, we’d lose everything,” Seto explained, his thumbs tensing in anticipation over the controller as the game loaded the first arena: a generic gladiator ring. “Everyone wants to see me fail so they can take over because not one of these people believes I can do this. It doesn’t matter how much I’ve done to elevate Kaiba Corp, it doesn’t matter how much money I’ve made, or how many patents I’ve secured; the second I relax, the second I take a step back, they’ll say how they knew all along it was too much for me, and they won’t respect me. And once they don’t respect me, they’ll try to get rid of me. It would be the Big Five all over again.”

    The fight started, and Seto deftly parried Mokuba’s lumbering first thrust, his character spinning around to throw her adversary over her head with her whip.

    “It can’t be that bad.” Mokuba grimaced in concentration as he attempted to maneuver his character around while blocking Seto’s follow-up attack. “Everybody seems to like you ok from what I’ve seen. Tanaka might be a pain, but he’s been loyal. Kobayashi too. And Roland would set himself on fire for you.”

    With a flourish, Seto got under Mokuba’s guard and knocked his character sideways before dragging him the length of the arena by his ankle and smashing him against a pillar.

    “Maybe. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t vultures. And even if they weren’t, I still wouldn't have time for anything else.”  

    “If you let me help out more, maybe you would. I know a thing or two.” To both of their surprise, Mokuba’s character kicked out and connected forcibly with Seto’s, throwing her over the edge and giving him the victory. “I am a Kaiba, after all.”   

* * *

    Rather than feeling liberated by Mokuba’s proposal, Seto felt haunted by it for the rest of the evening. His brother was old enough that Seto felt comfortable giving him more of a hands-on role in the company, and that Mokuba seemed not only capable, but willing made it even better. But what would he do with the free time that would allow him?

    He would have time to spend in the development lab, as he’d wanted, which would be both pleasurable and productive, but what else? He’d once told Yugi to get a hobby, but perhaps he ought to take his own advice. Other than Duel Monsters and chess, had he ever really had any interests that didn’t fall under his job description?

    Mokuba had his girlfriend and his games, and a newfound love of socializing, Alistair had his books and his studies and his…whatever it was he had with that student, Trudy crocheted. He swam, he supposed. But that was a form of exercise, not a hobby.  

    It was sad, really.

    Not wishing to fall down an unnecessary well of despair, Seto set himself down at his desk to review the settlement the legal department wanted to offer a KaibaLand construction worker who’d broken his hand on the job. It was a formality, seeing as he was no authority in legal matters, but he insisted in case the lawyers didn’t know that.  

    The settlement paperwork was as dull as he’d expected, and he had to read every line twice to make sure he understood it. Soon, he found his mind wandering to his desk drawer. He’d been holding onto the documents it contained for over a month, waiting for the right moment to hand them over. He could do it anytime he wished now, but what would happen once he did? Did he dare find out?

    Three pages into the twelve-page settlement, his resolve to make a decision only after he’d completed his night’s work faltered. It was technically still his day off. There was no reason not to read the settlement tomorrow instead.

    It only took Alistair two rings to answer his phone, and Seto was pleased to hear his eagerness.

    “Come down to my office; I need to talk to you.”  

* * *

    It was dangerous to make leaps about what Kaiba might want to talk to him about, so Alistair was careful to assume it was something mundane. Probably a reminder to keep Sewell sequestered in his room since he’d been lax about that recently.

    Nevertheless, he took a moment to look in the mirror before he left. His hair had grown long enough that his bangs were almost falling into his eyes, and the strands at the sides could easily be tucked behind his ears, but other than that, he thought he looked alright. Autumn hadn’t yet completely robbed his skin of the sun he’d soaked in over the summer, and the grey of his eyes popped against his tan. So too did the Orichalcos stone around his neck, dull today even under the bathroom lights. Swimming had strengthened his body too, and though still skinnier than he would have preferred, the muscles in his arms were more defined than before, giving shape to his thin shirt, the sleeves clinging to rather than hanging on him.

    Alistair spent another moment fussing with his hair before turning the light off and heading towards Kaiba’s office. No matter what it was Kaiba wanted, he at least knew he looked his best.

    Kaiba appeared to be absorbed by whatever he had up on his computer screen when Alistair entered the office.

    Still unsure what it was Kaiba wanted, he hesitated before closing the door behind him.

    “What’s up?” he asked, unnerved when Kaiba didn’t immediately acknowledge him.

    “I have some papers for you,” Kaiba explained without looking up, lazily indicating a thin attaché case on the desk in front of him. When he approached, Alistair saw that the Kaiba Corporation logo had been pressed into the leather. “You can look them over at your leisure, but the most important things are your passport and driver’s license, which are on top.

    Everything there will pass if you get them scanned, so you’re free to leave the country if you want,” he continued when Alistair tentatively opened the case and took out the passport, his eyes wide in disbelief.

    He flipped it open and saw his own picture staring back at him, taken the week before by Trudy against a green screen in the drawing room. He scanned the information. Alistair Ravensdale, born November 17th, nearly twenty years prior. Citizen of the Republic of Domino.

    “You’ll notice I had that passport backdated.” Kaiba went on, his eyes still on his screen. “Because presumably, you would have gotten your first passport when you came here, but that would have expired once you turned eighteen. You won’t need to renew it for another eight years, but that’s something you’ll be able to do on your own.

    Everything else there includes a driver’s license, as I said, a high school diploma and transcript from a boarding school in Wales that closed last year, adoption papers you just need to get Trudy and George to sign, and a notarized birth certificate, though I doubt you’ll ever need it. You can add in your pilot’s license when you get it next month. Any questions?”

     When Alistair glanced up, he saw that Kaiba was looking at him now, his expression impassive.

    “I can’t believe you did all this,” he said, his hands clutched around the passport. “Thank you.”

    “I told you I’d help you out.” Rather than sounding smug or any of the other usual tones in his repertoire, Kaiba’s voice was calm.

    “You’ve done more than that,” Alistair replied quietly. 

    “Don’t be so dramatic.” But Kaiba looked rather pleased.

    “Is that all you needed from me?” 

    “Why, are you planning on going into town tonight?” A frown of distaste flickered around Kaiba’s mouth as he said it, prompting Alistair to lay at least one ambiguity to rest.

    “No. But even if I was, it would just be to meet up with some friends.” When his statement was met with brief surprised relief, Alistair realized something he should have surmised when it happened. But rather than put Kaiba on the defensive, he decided to let him think he’d gotten away with his charade. “Why, were you going to ask me for a ride to go see Momo?” He did his best not to laugh when he said it.

    Kaiba at least had the dignity not to look away even as a blush crept up his pale cheeks. “Of course not. You, like everyone else, seem to be under the delusion that she was here for more than an internship. I was interviewing her for a position in the development lab.”

    “So you aren’t doing anything right now?” The tension in the pause that followed left Alistair feeling like he needed to either hide behind the couch or throw up.

    “No.”

    “Feel like taking a walk?”  


	22. The Dragon Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: allusions to child abuse/sexual assault

_"Tell me who you are,_ _show me what to do_  
_Let me be the one that you hold onto_  
_Open up your heart, let me look inside_  
_Baby, we’ll go wrong if you try to hide."_

~ _Tell Me Who You Are,_ Malene Mortensen    

 **The Dragon Machine**   

     By night, the grounds were lit by discreet rows of lights, artfully hidden amongst the flowers, and emitting just enough of a glow to reasonably see by. It occurred to Seto that he couldn’t remember ever having been in the garden before other than during the brief tour he’d gotten when he and Mokuba had first moved in. Here and there he’d been called out by George for his approval of several addendums, like a willow that drooped prettily across the path in the far corner, but he’d never spent any amount of time exploring or admiring it. The garden, as with so much of the house, was simply _there_.

    Even now, walking along one of George’s well-tended paths, it was impossible to focus on the care that had been put into shaping the low-growing hedges or even on the perfume of the late autumn nerine. Because of course, he wasn’t alone.

    Glancing sideways over at Alistair, Seto felt his pulse stutter before returning to its race around his body. Alistair turned his head just then, his mouth stretching into a relaxed smile when he saw Seto looking at him, and Seto quickly looked away in embarrassment.

    Alistair wasn’t just _there_. He was unpredictable, dynamic, alive. He made Seto want to feel those things too. It was frightening to imagine ever being so raw even for a moment, let alone a whole lifetime. To imagine ever wearing his emotions on his sleeve as Alistair did. But even if he couldn’t, if he wasn’t capable, perhaps, through Alistair, he could pretend.

    The breeze rustling the foliage was cold, but Seto barely noticed even as goosebumps rose on his arms, too preoccupied with his own thoughts, trying to decide if the path would lead him off the plank, or to salvation from his unhappiness. It was an uncertainty he was unused to and part of the intrigue Alistair offered.

    Several times, he thought to say something, but didn’t, instead allowing his companion to lead in silence, curious to see where Alistair, who knew as well as he did that Saito was watching them on the security cameras, was taking him.

    They stopped short of the bench under the willow. Alistair had looked up at the sky, seemingly searching for something.

    “There!” he said so unexpectedly that Seto jumped. “Do you see that group of stars? The ones forming a kind of forty-degree angle? That’s Pisces.”

    Seto tried to follow the line of where Alistair was pointing and faintly made out the angle he was referring to.

    “Do you know the story?” Alistair asked, and Seto shrugged. He wasn’t sure he’d ever looked up at the stars at all. “Aphrodite and her son were on the run from Typhon, the giant, and to escape, they turned themselves into fish and jumped into a nearby stream where he couldn’t find them. But they'd tied a string to each of their tails so they wouldn’t lose each other.

    You can actually see a lot of constellations from here since there isn’t that much light pollution. There’s the big dipper, and that one's the north star, see? The really bright one.”

    “I assume it has a story too?” Seto asked. He’d meant the question to be sardonic, but didn’t protest when Alistair obliged him.

    “A long time ago, there was a boy who loved to climb mountains. He traveled around the world climbing all of the tallest mountains until one day he found one that was taller than every other mountain he’d ever climbed before.

    It was too slippery for him to get a grip, so he decided the only way to get to the top was to climb _through_ it. When he got to the top, he saw he wouldn’t be able to get back down, and that he was going to die there, but he didn’t mind because he’d fulfilled his dream to climb the tallest mountain in the world.

    When he realized his son would never be able to return to him, the boy's father turned him into a star, the brightest one in the sky so everyone would be able to see how amazing and courageous he was."

    The story was interesting enough, but what held Seto captivated was Alistair’s expression. He looked not only relaxed but content, even happy, his eyes sparkling as he retold the folktale he’d probably heard from his parents or grandparents.

    “Anyway,” Alistair went on. “I just thought you might enjoy seeing them. There are a few more we should be able to see this time of year, but they’re harder to find.”

    Neither of them moved to return to the house, and instead, Seto sat on the stone bench, confident that the willow’s branches would obfuscate the camera’s view.

    With momentary hesitation, Alistair sat beside him, careful to leave a respectful amount of space, though he hoped that would become unnecessary. Kaiba hadn’t reacted to his constellation stories, but he hadn’t told him to shut up either. And there was an electricity between them, Alistair was sure of it. Crackling just beyond the range of their hearing.

    “Thank you for your continued discretion,” Kaiba said, his hands threaded together in his lap and his gaze on his own interlaced fingers.

    “Well, like you said: it’s none of my business. Besides, you made it clear you don’t want me to know you,” Alistair added pointedly.

    “There isn’t that much to know.”Alistair made a noise of dissension, but didn’t argue. “I have, however, rethought the other part of that statement.” Kaiba turned his face to Alistair, who saw in his eyes and in the momentary biting of his lower lip a shyness he doubted had ever existed in him before. “After you get your license next month there won’t be anything keeping you here but…” Kaiba paused, biting his lip again.

    “I wouldn't say that." 

     They stared at each other. Even in the relative darkness, Alistair could see how Kaiba's eyes had brightened, and his breath caught. 

     "Good."    

    The hand Kaiba cupped around his jaw was trembling, perhaps because of the cold, and when he leaned in to kiss him it was with such softness it felt like a question. It made Alistair's heart race.

    One of Seto’s grounding principles was that he never put himself into situations he couldn’t predict or excel at. Before setting foot at the aviation academy he’d studied the commands and mechanics so that on his first day nothing was new to him, and his knowledgeability had earned him the praise of everyone he’d worked with. But whatever this was, wasn’t something he could prepare for. To be so vulnerable was strange and unsettling, and when Alistair kissed him back, he felt even more unsteady than before.

    What was he supposed to do now? For all that they’d fallen into bed together many times in the past, he supposed this time he ought to show some kind of affection. But how could he do that without playing his entire hand? Did it matter? Why did anything need to change just because they were outside in the garden in the middle of the night? Just because Alistair was so warm against the chilly air, enticing Seto to hold on a little bit tighter, pull him just a little bit closer.

    He hadn’t said anything that had to be interpreted as romantic. He’d never be so ridiculous. Nevermind how good it felt when Alistair moved to sit in his lap, how easily his hands slid up Alistair’s back.

    What was it he was feeling that didn’t match what was happening?

    When he increased the pressure on Alistair’s mouth, he realized the emotions he was feeling were loneliness and the sadness that came with understanding, in its absence, how much it had weighed on him.

    “Maybe we should head back,” Alistair suggested, his arms wrapped loosely around Seto’s neck. “I can think of a few warmer places we could do this.”  

    Seto might have protested were it not for the stiffness in his fingers; he was reluctant to let go of Alistair’s waist, afraid that moving would shatter his fragile bliss.

    As if in reassurance, Alistair stroked a hand along his cheek as he got up.

    The gentle touch made Seto nervous, uncertainty tugging him in the opposite direction of whatever force had been propelling him towards this for months. It was the same inexplicable nervousness he’d felt the day Alistair had gatecrashed his dinner with Mokuba and his girlfriend.

   “Are you coming?”

    Seto started and realized Alistair had walked almost to the center of the garden while he was still on the bench, the cold from the stone seeping into his legs and back.

    He felt almost ill thinking about going through with this when he was so doubtful, but that other force, unexpectedly strong even up against his anxiety, got him to his feet and walking to catch up.

    Alistair’s soft smile was rather amused, and the wind rippling his hair made Seto want to touch it. It was enough, for now, to take things at face value he supposed. To allow Alistair to guide him. To see where he was led.

    Nothing had really happened yet, and he could stop whenever he wanted. And it wasn’t as though Alistair hadn’t already seen the shameful markings of failure his body documented; the scars on his back, what he’d done to himself that night. But Alistair would have questions, and the answers to those questions would lead to the guest room.

    Gozaburo had made him swear never to reveal what had happened there, but the threat had been redundant; Seto would never have told.

    He could always forbid Alistair to ask questions outright, and knew Alistair would respect that, but that wouldn’t stop him from working over the marks in his mind, trying to figure out what they meant with or without Seto’s permission.

    They had made it back to the house, and the difference in temperature made his skin tingle. He sensed Alistair looking at him after they’d walked in silence past the pool and the dining room and were standing in front of the staircase, and grasped that he was supposed to determine what was going to happen next.

    With Alistair and everything his presence promised standing right beside him looking so charmingly coy, he was tempted to let himself be undone. He wanted to feel Alistair’s warmth against him again, feel his lips caress his skin, wanted to consume the fire for life he struggled to stoke and that Alistair seemed to maintain so easily.

    “Come on.” 

*     *     *     * 

    Alistair wasn’t sure why he’d expected anything other than for Kaiba’s bedroom to look exactly like the rest of the house. To reveal, perhaps, something of Kaiba no one else got to see.

    It was a large room, if not quite as grand as his. The high ceiling framed with decorative moldings along the walls in warm creams and whites was beautiful, but not personal. Even touches like red hangings in the several large windows and on the four poster bed, for all that they fit the aristocratic aesthetic of the house, didn’t seem like things Kaiba had chosen. They likely pre-dated his arrival at the estate, and for some reason, instead of making the space his own, he’d simply left it as it had always been.

    “This isn’t a museum,” Kaiba said gruffly as he closed the door.

    “Forgive me,” Alistair replied with mock deference. “But I thought I’d be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity look around. It’s not too often anyone gets invited up to the Great Seto Kaiba’s bedroom, I’m sure.” He'd hoped his joking comment would at least make Kaiba crack a smile, but when it didn't, he watched carefully for any signs he was having second thoughts, but Kaiba’s expression, as usual, was largely unreadable.

    “Just you.” Kaiba’s voice was flat, but Alistair saw the impassive mask slip, just for a moment, to reveal the trepidation he’d sensed. Kaiba must have known too because he looked away before clicking his arm bracers open and setting them on the bedside table with a dull clunk.

    Everything he was doing, from taking off his arm bracers and necklace, to pulling off his trench coat and sitting on the bed to take off his shoes felt clumsy, and Seto redoubled his attempt to make the actions seem as effortless as they ought to have been. If only his heart would stop beating so painfully fast…

    Glancing upwards, he saw Alistair kick off his boots and remove his jacket with practiced ease, hesitating only on the verge of dropping it on the floor, then folding it and setting it on top of the laundry hamper by the door instead. If he understood what a pivotal moment in Seto’s life this was, he seemed relaxed about being a part of it.

    To give himself another moment to change his mind, Seto ducked into his closet to put his clothes away. Amongst his rows of suit jackets and shoes, he caught his breath, one hand braced against the wall.

    What if Alistair's expectations were too high? What if he was no good? What if it meant more to him than it did to Alistair? What if he couldn’t do it at all?

    His torrent of concerns was stopped abruptly by a feather-light weight on his back. The pleasant jolt of adrenaline from that simple touch was enough to end his indecisiveness. Come what may, he wanted more of that.

    He turned, and without looking to see what expression Alistair had in his eyes, he leaned down to kiss him.

    It was such a relief, he found, to drown in another person this way. He could feel the tautness of Alistair’s flanks under his hands and the pleasant pressure of his weight against him. For all intents and purposes, he got to be someone other than himself: ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. He’d never have thought that alone could feel so good. 

    Instinct was something Seto had underestimated, and so he was surprised when Alistair lightly biting down on his bottom lip was enough for him to know what to do, as though it was a skill he was dusting off rather than testing out for the first time.

    His hands easily found their way to Alistair’s lower back and under his shirt, his skin as warm as Seto had imagined. But he couldn’t focus on that for long, as Alistair chose that moment to slide his hands down his arms and capture his wrists. With a light tug, he led Seto to the smooth plane of the bed where he let go of him long enough to deftly pull his shirt over his head, the motion causing the lean muscle in his stomach to stretch attractively. Seto had seen Alistair shirtless plenty of times at the pool, but it was different this time, because this time, he was allowed to touch him.

    Soon, Seto wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, they were sprawled out on the bed with Alistair beneath him, a coquettish grin curving his lips. It was astonishing how easy for Alistair this seemed, how shamelessly he was able to reveal himself. How he seemed to know what he wanted.

    It was only when he felt Alistair's fingertips curl under the hem of his shirt that Seto realized they’d left the light on. Was he allowed to get up now and turn it off? Or would that seem silly? The last thing in the world he wanted was to be laughed at at such a critical juncture. And it wasn’t like turning the light off would be anything to hide behind.

    In an attempt to display the same easy confidence Alistair had, Seto sat up on his knees, and with a flutter of apprehension hidden in the moment he pulled the turtleneck over his head, dropped the garment off the side of the bed. Because he himself was so self-conscious of it, he’d expected Alistair’s eyes to go immediately to his wrist, but Seto observed as they traveled down his torso instead, his tongue even darting out to wet his lips.

    Nothing Alistair could have hoped to see in the bedroom could have better shown him who Kaiba was than Kaiba’s own expressions since he’d closed the door. Kaiba’s eyes, especially blue in the overhead light, were wide in apprehension, and Alistair could imagine from the shallowness of his breathing that his heart was racing. In the garden, he’d revealed his desire to do this, an opportunity Alistair had readily pounced on. But seeing Kaiba look at him as though afraid something might change his mind forced Alistair to re-conceptualize what was happening.

    He’d intended to say something, but before he could, Kaiba seemed to steel himself and lie across him once more, the sudden movement causing the sheets to slide part-way off the bed. Alistair wrapped his leg around Kaiba’s to pull him even closer as Kaiba skimmed his mouth along his jaw and down his neck.

    “ _Unn_ ,” Alistair breathed, bucking against him when Kaiba increased the pressure on his pulse, his arms wrapping around Kaiba’s waist so that his nails dug into his lower back.

    Pleased with the sounds he was dragging out of Alistair’s throat with such simple ministrations, Seto idly kissed and nipped at the exposed skin along his shoulder. With Alistair squirming beneath him, he was starting to feel his nerves and uncertainty ebbing. This was good. He could do this.

    The sensation of Alistair’s lithe body rubbing up against his was beginning to cloud his ability to remain objective, and his own breathing hitched when Alistair took one hand off his back and threaded it between their bodies to tease along his thigh. The touch caused the color to rise in his cheeks, and he redoubled his efforts to press his face against Alistair's neck.

    Suddenly, Alistair shifted his weight and pushed up against Seto’s chest, forcing them to roll over into the middle of the bed. Alistair grinned down at him with half-lidded eyes, his palms flat against Seto’s torso. It was a hungry expression radiating desire. It should have been sexy. It should have made Seto want to rip the rest of both of their clothes off. But it didn’t.

    It didn’t matter that he was stronger than Alistair was, that he wasn’t really pinned underneath him, that he could tell him to move and he would. It didn’t matter that there was nothing unpleasant about having Alistair on top of him; he’d invited Alistair to his bedroom specifically to do this! It actually felt _good_.

    Logic and emotion told him it was ridiculous, but instinct brought his hands up to push Alistair backwards so that with a startled intake of breath he fell onto his side.

    Seto quickly pulled himself into a sitting position, his back pressed flush against the headboard. His chest heaved as his heart banged against his ribs and his hands clawed into the rumpled silk sheets.

    Now he really was trapped. Alistair was rightfully going to demand an explanation he couldn’t provide and in frustration and shame he’d kick him out of the house and hope to hear of his immediate murder on the morning news so no one would ever know what had happened. And afterwards, he’d double down on his adamance to never show weakness again. This was exactly why he ought to have known better than to do this in the first place! Why had he thought things would be different now than they had been a few months ago?

    “I’m sorry if I did something wrong.”

    Seto’s head snapped up and he saw Alistair looking at him with concern, one hand slightly outstretched as though to touch his arm.  

    “It’s none of your business!” Seto snarled, his fists clenched even tighter into the blankets. This was worse than the drawing room. That he could write off as relating to stress from his job if pressed for a reason. This...There was nothing to be said.

    “I’ll leave if you want me to.” But Alistair hadn’t moved except to sit up.

    Agreement with a dollop of acidity was on the tip of Seto’s tongue. It was the only correct answer. The only way to save face. Then he could be left alone to cringe at his own humiliation in peace until exhaustion caught up.

    But he couldn’t.

    He’d expected judgement and scorn, a part of him sure that like everyone else, Alistair just wanted a piece of him. But nothing in Alistair’s face suggested anything but compassion. It was exactly what had shown him that Alistair was different in the first place.

    His tenacity and passion.

    His kindness.

    His intuitive empathy.  

    But what if, because the qualities were so innate to who he was, Alistair applied them to him impersonally? What if he was just one of any number of people Alistair would treat the same way if given the chance? What if he only cared about him because he cared about everyone? Because if that was true, then Alistair hadn’t really accepted who he was. Hadn’t changed his opinion of all the things he’d ridiculed him for in the past. It would mean Alistair just felt sorry for him the way Seto assumed he was capable of feeling sorry for anyone. But it wouldn’t be sustainable, because Seto knew of himself that he hadn’t changed at all since they’d met, and once Alistair saw that too, that’d be the end of it.

    But he couldn’t ignore that no one else had ever looked at him like that. And maybe they never would again if he didn’t push past his deeply ingrained belief that he didn’t need anyone else. He was so tired of believing that anyway. What had nihilism ever done for him other than leave him stuck in the audience watching as everyone else, Mokuba, Yugi, Wheeler, Alistair, lived out lives he’d been told were worthless, his assurances that none of it mattered unheard by anyone but himself. And had he ever _really_ believed the narrative that  independence was stronger than unity?

    Seto’s initial panic had settled into melancholy so that when he felt his fingertips graze Alistair’s, there was no more adrenaline to spare on how much of his underbelly the gesture revealed.

    The strange, if intense, brevity of his past encounters with Kaiba had left Alistair baffled and more than a little annoyed. But now he could intuit the meaning behind them from the intermingled anger and panic, now outmatched by sad resign, he’d seen in Kaiba’s eyes and in the way his shoulders had stiffened then slumped against the headboard. But especially in the tentative journey of Kaiba’s hand from his side to where Alistair’s own failed attempt at physical reassurance lay uselessly across a crease in the blanket.

    It was with aching tenderness that Alistair completed what they’d both begun and curled his fingers around Kaiba’s.

    “I need to go to bed.” Kaiba pulled his hand back into his own lap, though not before letting the contact linger.

    “Yeah, me too.”

    They were both careful not to look at each other, and Alistair felt it was the closest to the less subtle ‘get out’ he was going to get. He moved to the edge of the bed, prepared to go back to his room, reluctantly resigned to the likelihood of Kaiba pulling away for good.

    “You don’t have to leave.” Alistair turned back in surprise. Kaiba wasn’t looking at him, but down at the bedspread, his disheveled bangs falling into his eyes. “Not that I care,” he added, the sharp haughtiness of his tone clashing dishonestly with his demure posture. “But this mattress is much better than the one in your room, so maybe you wouldn’t wake everyone up screaming about your brother.”

    It was difficult, but Alistair managed to avoid smiling by biting down hard on his lower lip before trusting himself to respond.

    “You’re probably right.” This time he did get up only to immediately stumble over Kaiba’s shirt, still lying on the floor. “I’ll be right back,” he said as he bent to pick it up before folding it and, unsure what else to do with it, setting it on the bed.

    With watchful eyes, Seto observed Alistair toe on his shoes and toss his clothes over his arm. Once he’d left, he sank onto his back so that all he could see was the shadowy red of the canopy. A short reprieve instead of what should have been a night of wallowing in embarrassment. Well, it was supposed to have been completely different than either of those things, but that had evidently been a grave error in judgement. He hadn’t known if Alistair would agree when he’d invited him to spend the night, and now he wasn’t sure if he actually wanted him to.

    No, that wasn’t true. He wanted him there, he just wished it could be completely on his own terms rather than having to live with the fact that he couldn’t control or even necessarily know what Alistair thought about any of it.

    The lights in the hallway were always on, but tonight, they made Alistair uncomfortable as he tiptoed back to his room, and he wished he could turn them off. It was hardly a walk of shame, but there was something distinctly unnerving about creeping around half-naked in the glare of the lights where anyone could stumble across him. It wasn’t the most important thing to dwell on, though.

    It was exhilarating to have been invited into Kaiba’s bed after a summer (a few years if he was being honest) of longing for it. But Kaiba came with baggage he hadn’t expected, though it made sense of so much that there had been a far darker layer to Kaiba’s relationship with his step-father than he'd surmised. 

     _“What the hell’s ever happened to you? Did daddy not get you the right colored pony?”_

    As his own words echoed through his thoughts, Alistair gripped onto his clothes, ashamed he’d ever said something so callous. He couldn’t have known how barbed the comment was, but he’d certainly meant it to be ugly.

   How much more about Kaiba didn’t he know? Not for the first time, he recalled Darren’s warning about getting involved with someone with depression, but Kaiba didn’t seem depressed, he just seemed...scared.

    He’d never stopped to consider what it would mean to get involved with Seto Kaiba, just that he wanted to. If that desire had been fueled by the same craving so many had to sleep with the handsome young business magnate, he was sure he wouldn’t feel so conflicted, but while it had started out that way, there were feelings involved now.

    When he opened his door, he saw that Sewell had fallen asleep on top of the coffee table, wrapped so tightly in her own tail she’d buried her nose in it. Two brief slits of yellow were the only indication she knew he was there before she closed her eyes again, sighed, and went back to sleep.

    While Alistair had been gone, Seto’d kept himself busy to hold his unease in check, first smoothing out the disheveled bed clothes, meticulously brushing his teeth and putting on pajamas, then walking in a slow circle around the room, straightening anything that appeared to have been moved off-center. He paused to pick up the framed photograph on the bedside table. It had only been taken a few years prior, but while he felt he was much the same, Mokuba looked considerably younger to him, his thirteen year-old face rounder, his large blue eyes more child-like. They’d been close then. Seto supposed they still were, in a way, but with his brother branching off to forge his own identity, it would never be the same.

    He set the frame back on the table. Maybe that was natural. And wasn’t he, in essence, doing the same? Wasn’t that what Alistair represented? Not a replacement for Mokuba, that would be an insult to them both, but a natural progression. If only he understood as well as Mokuba did what that meant.

    A light knock preceded Alistair’s reentry into the bedroom.

    “This isn’t a sleepover,” Seto explained when Alistair stopped tentatively in the middle of the darkened room. “So don’t think we’re going to be braiding each other’s hair and gossiping.” He turned to pull back the sheets and get in on the side closest to the window. He heard Alistair stifle a laugh, but stubbornly refused to look at him, instead lying stoically on his side so the weak light from the crescent moon shone into his face.

    “I promise not to be disappointed.”

    Seto felt the mattress dip as Alistair got in next to him and snapped “stay on your own side” before Alistair could get too close.

    Having spent the day in a state bordering on exhaustion, Seto would have liked to fall asleep immediately, but he had to wait for Alistair to fall asleep first. And exasperatingly, even though he had been the one to push Alistair off of him, now, in the dark, he felt the urge to roll over and try again. He decided to compromise. He’d talk. Give Alistair, and himself, something else to think about.

    “One of the questions you asked me before was why Blue Eyes is my favorite monster.”

    The unexpected sound of Kaiba’s voice made Alistair freeze in the act of slowly inching his foot towards Kaiba’s leg under the innocent pretext that he was trying to get comfortable.

    “What? Oh. Yeah.”

    “When I was a kid my favorite picture book was this one called _The Dragon Machine,_ ” Kaiba began, his voice almost dreamy, and Alistair was sure he was picturing the book as he spoke. “It’s about this kid who’s always getting ignored by everyone and who starts seeing dragons everywhere that no one else can see, and he starts taking them home with him. But these are real dragons, not the pathetic cartoon dragons that breathe rainbows and fly kids around like glorified ponies. So obviously the boy can’t tame them or control them, and he realizes he has to take them back to where they came from.

    To get them to follow him there, he builds this flying machine shaped like a huge dragon out of any kind of metal he can find, and leads them back to their world. In the end, I think his parents chase after him and there’s some kind of happy ending, but anyway, because of that book, I decided I wanted to build my own dragon machine so I could fly to their world too.” Kaiba paused and Alistair risked sliding over a few inches with strategic, surreptitious movements.

    “I remember going to the library after school and poring over these books about planes and their designs, trying to figure out how to modify them. Around that time, Pegasus came out with the Blue Eyes White Dragon cards, and I knew that’s what mine was going to look like.” Kaiba chuckled softly in the dark. “My dad kept telling everyone how I was going to be an aircraft engineer because of how much paper I wasted on my blueprints. I was probably six.”

    “Well, you did design your jet, so he wasn’t wrong.” Alistair could tell how important the story was to Kaiba, and he felt a surge of happiness that he was apparently enough of a confidant for Kaiba to tell it to him. “So you’ve always liked dragons, huh?” By now, Alistair had rolled onto his side and propped his chin in his hand.

    “I guess so.” Seto’s view of the edge of the mattress fell out of focus as he remembered. He hadn’t thought about _The Dragon Machine_ in years. There had been many dragon-themed books in his childhood collection, but that had been the only one to make the dragons feel _real_. George’s dragons were wild and mischievous, not like in so many of the other books gifted to him by his father. Those dragons had been brightly colored and buffoonish, and they ate tacos and befriended knights. In other words, they were harmless, which Seto was convinced real dragons would never be. _The Dragon Machine_ had understood this.

    He’d known, of course, that the dragons in the picture book were the products of the author’s fantasy, but as a small child, he’d believed they did exist somewhere, if only he could find them. It had been a short-lived belief that had crumbled under even the cursory research of a six year-old, but his yearning for his own dragon machine had only intensified.

    His reminiscence was interrupted by Alistair, who he felt move a little closer, and Seto decided to concede. He rolled onto his back, his shoulder lightly touching Alistair’s forearm, but he stared fixedly up at the canopy rather than at the person at his side.

    “I didn’t have such lofty ambitions when I was that age,” Alistair said. “I wanted to be a soldier, like my dad. Ironic, right?” He laughed. “When I was really little and my dad was home, I’d wait for him and my mom to go to bed and sneak out into the kitchen to put his helmet on and pretend I was prepping to go on a mission. It’s not like I wasn’t allowed to or anything. I’m not sure why I snuck around like that. But one time, my mom got up for some reason and caught me and got really mad at me for being up past my bedtime, and after that I never put the helmet on again even though her being mad at me had nothing to do with that. Kids are weird that way.”

    Seto was surprised to hear Alistair speak of his family so easily.

    Alistair had indeed shocked himself. But it made him happy; he didn’t want to only be able to remember the bad times. Here he could focus instead on what would happen next. Was Kaiba going to be a part of that?

    Glancing over at Kaiba’s shadowy face, he was just in time to see the other man quickly look away.

    Intuition told him he wouldn’t be rebuffed if he closed the last bit of distance…

    By his own rules, Seto should have shoved Alistair away all over again when he rested his head against his shoulder, and certainly when he laid his hand on his chest. He’d always imagined cuddling to be a revolting, sappy act, best reserved for people who referred to each other by cringworthy pet names. But the warm weight of Alistair’s hand and the light pressure of having him against his side were nice.   

     Before long, Alistair's breathing slowed and deepened as he fell asleep, but although Seto wanted to follow him, and his entire body ached with tiredness, he couldn't shut his mind down yet. 

     It was the vestiges of his fear speaking, not the result of his reawakening to reality, and Seto tried to force himself to believe he'd been wrong. Alistair had seen him at his weakest, and yet, here he was. He could have been faking his concern, but Seto decided not to think so. For whatever his reasons, something about living under his roof had changed Alistair's opinion of him. And--even more incomprehensible--he evidently _liked_ him. That, really, was the part he understood the least in all of this. People wanting things from him, typical. People wishing they could be him, plebeian but understandable. But _like_? Like what? Ever since taking over Kaiba Corp he'd striven to make 'repellent' and 'Seto Kaiba' seamlessly synonymous; something Alistair himself had observed only months ago. 

     He felt Alistair's fingers twitch against his chest and with momentary vacillation, placed his hand on top of them, the rest of him remaining quite still so as not to wake his bed mate.  

     The already weak moonlight was suddenly cut off by a group of dark clouds, but Seto hardly noticed, focusing instead on how gently he could run his thumb over the delicate bones of Alistair's wrist. He stopped abruptly when Alistair sighed in his sleep and nuzzled more securely against his shoulder. 

     In the dark, with no Gozaburo to ridicule and mock him, and too late at night for his professional self to remind him that alliances, while useful, were always dangerous, Seto decided that for once he wanted to take a risk. His thoughts drifted to his scars. There was no going back to fix them, but if he trusted Alistair, maybe, _maybe_ his risk would pay off and keep him out of the drawing room for good. Maybe. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Dragon Machine is a really lovely picture book by Helen Ward, and with gorgeous illustrations by Wayne Anderson that I'm sure would make anyone want their own dragon shaped jet.


	23. Bored Meeting

_**"** You can spend your whole life analyzing_  
_Justifying, quantifying, and dividing_  
_'Til there's nothin' anymore_

 _Why don't you just close your eyes_  
_And kiss my lips and let it go_

_Don't have to be a genius_

_To figure what's between us."_

_The Math,_ Hilary Duff 

**Bored Meeting**

        Seto Kaiba was a man of habit, his life a streamlined routine to fit in the many things he needed done across the day. And as much as he might have preferred to turn off his alarm and stay nestled against the young man lying beside him, there was no escaping His Job. When the customary clanging and buzzing emanating from his phone roused him the next morning, he dutifully reached out to silence it and sat up.

    Beside him, Alistair stirred, gray eyes opening under the flutter of dark eyelashes, and yawned as though waking up in Seto Kaiba’s bed wasn’t completely unprecedented.

    “Time to get up already?” he complained good-naturedly, yawning again before pushing himself up onto his arms, random strands of red hair falling into his face.

    “I don’t care if you stay awake or not, but you have to get back to your room before Mokuba gets up.” Seto reluctantly got out of bed and stretched.

    “Why would he be getting up so early?” Alistair asked, his brows knitting in confusion. He’d never known Mokuba to get up before eight-thirty, and even then, only very reluctantly.

    “He’s coming to headquarters with me today.” Seto looked back at Alistair whose loose t-shirt had slipped down low on his collarbone. “As for what happened last night...I don’t want you getting the wrong idea.”

    “God forbid,” Alistair agreed with a grin. “What idea should I be getting?”

    Seto hesitated to side-step his inclination to reply with snippy sarcasm, but knew it didn’t count as taking a risk unless he committed. To some extent anyway.

    “As long as you understand this isn’t serious, you can consider my invitation extended indefinitely.” He thought he might have seen amusement in Alistair’s expression, but when he spoke, his tone was earnest.

    “Got it.” Alistair fell back against the pillow. “Your mattress really is more comfortable than mine by the way,” he added. “So I appreciate it.”

    “Yeah, well, you’re welcome.”

    There was something so naughty about having Alistair lounging amongst the rumpled sheets with his shirt askew, and that was before Seto noticed the several hickeys that had blossomed along his neck and shoulder overnight. He felt himself flushing as he recalled how they’d gotten there, but might yet have avoided a deep blush if Alistair hadn’t noticed where he’d been looking and rested his hand across the spot.

    “Make sure no one sees that,” Seto deadpanned, pretending to be absorbed in looking at the first tendrils of sunrise peeking through the tree outside his window.

    “Sure. But maybe be more careful next time.”

     Embarrassment was an emotion Seto was becoming uncomfortably familiar with of late, and was easily his least favorite element of the entire experiment. But at least he was on good enough terms with it now to know that on the scale from mild, momentary discomfort to wanting to disappear, this incident ranked rather low.

    Alistair seemed to intuit that he had nothing more to say on the subject because Seto heard him get up and pad across the floor.

    “Oh!” he exclaimed, and Seto turned to see him paused at the door. “Maybe you should go first. It might be kind of awkward if--.”

    “Yeah.”

     Seto passed by Alistair closer than was strictly necessary, enjoying the brief spark of warmth as their shoulders brushed against each other. Then he was at the door, peering out into the hallway with Alistair hidden safely against the wall.

     “Come on,” he whispered, and instantly felt silly. Was he really resorting to whispering in his own room in his own house?

     As though thinking along the same ridiculous lines, Alistair laughed softly before tip-toeing past Seto and down the hall to the master bedroom, leaving Seto to wonder if he’d brushed into him on purpose too.

     He couldn’t contemplate it for long. With Alistair gone, the events of the night before felt more like a vivid dream, making this just another normal day, and he was running late. Before he could commence his morning routine, though, he went to Mokuba’s room to make sure he was awake. He could hear the breathy whine of a hair dryer through the door and, mollified, returned to his room feeling satisfied Mokuba had taken the initiative to get ready without prodding. It didn’t occur to him that Mokuba might be excited.

    Over their matches in Mokuba’s fighting game the day before, they’d decided to have Mokuba shadow him for a day or two so he could decide what interested him. Then it would be arranged for a senior staff member to school him in the duties of that department and ultimately, allow Mokuba to micromanage it in Seto’s stead. It would likely result in even more work for him in the weeks it took Mokuba to get the hang of his chosen niche, but as he became more confident, it would free up a few hours in Seto’s schedule.

    Mokuba had spent almost as much time deciding what to wear on his first official day of work as he had before his first date with Hillary. He’d toyed around with the idea of wearing a suit, but decided it would underscore how young he was. Similarly, the standard issue Kaiba-corp polo made him feel like one of the kids from the Kaiba Corp summer camp who had only really been there for the engineers to coo over. In the end, he’d just put on his regular clothes figuring at least he looked like himself.

     He hadn’t expected Seto to agree to letting him actually join the company, but when his older brother had asked him seriously if he was willing to step up, he’d felt the stirrings of pride. Seto had been indulgent in the past, but always in a way Mokuba knew was meant to boost his self-confidence. Seto hadn't really _needed_ him to referee at Battle City nor would be be a better MC at Grand Championship. But to allow him to work alongside him at headquarters meant Seto finally believed in him for real.

    It had surprised him how easily he’d been able to get up when his alarm had gone off at six, and even more so that he’d managed to beat his brother to breakfast.

    Trudy had already laid out a pot of coffee and the newspaper at Seto’s place, and a cup of tea at his. He wished she’d given him coffee instead even though he didn’t like it, but proceeded to sip at his tea and drag the newspaper over, idly flipping through it as he’d seen Seto do many times back before he’d started going into the office so early.

    The articles were all too long to hold his interest, and he’d finished the headlines before reaching the bottom of his cup. Just as he was about to go over them again, he heard Seto enter the dining room and set it aside with a flourish.

    “Morning, Seto!” he greeted him. “I was just about to make sure you were awake.”

    Apparently Seto was still too sleepy to talk to him because he just nodded in acknowledgement before reaching for his coffee, then the newspaper, which he folded back to the front page.

     “There’s gonna be a big battle across the border,” Mokuba informed him. “So the government has to decide about the refugees pretty soon.” The lengthy article had been accompanied by a large photograph of a group of women and children huddled against a wall of rubble.

     Mokuba went to take another sip of tea only to be met by an empty cup. “There’s nothing about KC in there, though; just an ad for the Duel Disks.”

    “Uh huh.”

    Mokuba had expected some kind of pep talk over breakfast, but until Trudy came back with their food and Seto had finished his second cup of coffee, he didn’t say anything at all.

    “It’s going to be a long day.”

    Mokuba looked up from his phone at Seto, who had finally put the newspaper down and shoved his empty plate to the side.

    “I can handle it.”

    “I know,” Seto replied with what Mokuba could swear was the flicker of a smile. “But if you get sick of it and want to come home that’s fine.”

    “I won’t.”

    Trudy had essentially said the same thing when she’d brought up breakfast, and Mokuba was a little annoyed everyone seemed to think he was biting off more than he could chew. He was a Kaiba too! He was born to do this just as much as Seto!

    Refusing to let their lack of faith spoil his excitement, Mokuba returned to scrolling through the latest news on the Dueling Network’s app.

    When Trudy came to collect the dishes, she wished them both a good day at the office, but although Mokuba was too distracted to notice, Seto could sense her disapproval. When he’d started getting up this early to go to work, she’d expressed her concern that he was pushing himself too hard, and her feeling that a child shouldn’t have such responsibilities. Now that he was an adult there was nothing more for her to say to him on the matter, but he knew she was silently denouncing him for leading his younger brother in his footsteps.

    He wasn’t forcing Mokuba to go, though; this had been Mokuba’s own idea! Without addressing her, he went to put on his jacket, his brother quickly getting up to follow.

    “I sent a memo to all the senior staff about you sitting in on our meetings today,” Seto began as soon as he and Mokuba had loaded into the Porsche and pulled out of the driveway. “It’ll be a good opportunity for you to get the rundown of what all the departments are working on, so make sure to pay attention. Before that happens, you’ll need to sign an NDA. It’s a formality, of course, but because you’ve chosen to be so public about your little girlfriend, they’re afraid you’ll tell her more than you should.”

    Mokuba peeled his eyes away from the road where he’d been watching with delight as the Porsche shot past the much less flashy commuters. “Hillary doesn’t care about any of this stuff,” he replied, leaning back in the seat. “She doesn’t even know how to play Duel Monsters.”

    “Fine, but that’s not all we deal in. And for that matter, Uedo wants to sit down with you at some point to draw up a relationship contract.”

    “That’s dumb,” Mokuba laughed.

    “You don’t really have a choice,” Seto said without looking at him. It was the part about Mokuba coming to work with him he’d been least looking forward to. His brother seemed to be under the naive impression that his life existed in a vacuum, and that none of his recent decisions would have consequences. He’d put off getting into this particular area for months, knowing how Mokuba would undoubtedly feel about it. It should have happened before the girl had ever stepped foot in their house, but now that the company was involved, it was unavoidable. “If you want to be in on company secrets there has to be a guarantee they’ll stay confidential. I trust you completely, so you signing an NDA is, as I said, just for show, but no matter how much you think you know this girl, we can’t take the chance that she could turn on you in the media if anything went wrong.”

    Predictably, Mokuba defended his girlfriend’s honor, assuring Seto of her trustworthiness, and attacking him and Uedo for their cynicism.

    “And anyway,” he concluded, finally seeming to run out of steam. “None of this even matters unless she and I break up, which we won’t.”

    “Tell that to Uedo; this has nothing to do with me,” Seto reminded him.

     “You agree though,” Mokuba pouted. “But you don’t know what you’re talking about. Just because _you_ don’t trust anyone doesn’t mean it’s always a liability. If you had a girlfriend too, you’d understand.”

     “Don’t make this about us,” Seto warned him, changing lanes. “I’m not saying I agree to win points, I’m saying I agree because it’s a smart idea. Don’t think of it as implying you don’t trust her, think of it as protecting yourself. And not just from her, but from anything she might say to her friends. You can’t tell me you trust all of them implicitly.”

    “I guess,” Mokuba grumbled. “It’s not like it matters since we aren’t gonna break up.”

    He spent most of the rest of the car ride sulking and looking out the window, but with much less enthusiasm.

    With Mokuba icing him out, Seto turned his mind to the day ahead. It was amazing how, despite his persistent jet-lag, he felt so refreshed. When he’d longed for a break in his routine it had never occurred to him it would come in the form of another person, but the previous night had left him feeling liberated. With Alistair he’d already broken down so many of his perceived barriers to companionship there was little left to be afraid of. Either that or there was a lot more to be afraid of he’d never considered, but either way, he’d let Alistair push him and felt the better for it. It had been awful in that moment to find himself so exposed, but despite all his expectations to the contrary, Alistair had stayed. That knowledge, and the knowledge of what he had to look forward to that night was enough to give him the zeal he needed to put in the work to earn it.

* * *

      Despite Seto’s last-minute reminder to be professional no matter how much he disagreed with what had been asked of him, Mokuba acted every one of his fifteen years when it was time for him to sign first the general NDA and even more so when meeting with Uedo. His lawyer hadn’t expressly told him Mokuba had been bratty, but Seto could sense it in the distaste with which he informed him it had been completed. Seto wanted to be able to blame his brother but knew ultimately the blame was on him. He was Mokuba’s guardian, and apparently somewhere down the line he’d failed to teach him discipline. A grave error and bad timing to have discovered it.

     “I told you to be respectful!” Seto reprimanded him after pulling him into an unused conference room. “You’re acting like a child.”

     Mokuba crossed his arms and met his gaze with challenge in his eyes. “You always told me to stand up for myself.”

    “You’re not standing up for yourself; you’re just whining. Claiming things aren’t fair is childish. The world isn’t fair, so you have to bend it in your favor, but you can’t do that without putting up with a few things.” He looked at him meaningfully and Mokuba knew better than to argue. He certainly didn’t know everything Seto had endured under Gozaburo, but he knew enough.

     “I’m sorry.”

     “Don’t apologize; that’s meaningless. Just do better.”

    Disappointing Seto left Mokuba feeling especially chagrined. He’d insisted he was mature enough for this only to fail spectacularly at the first test. He knew putting Hillary under the constraints of a relationship contract was ridiculous and would hurt her feelings, but his brother was right that arguing about it wasn’t the best way to prove that.

    At the first meeting, he did his best to keep up, and took ample notes on the handheld he’d bought for the occasion. There was so much about the company he’d never known, and it was all rather tedious and involved squiggly line graphs he could barely make meaning of even as they were being explained. Jargon phrases like ‘action item’,‘change agent’, and ‘human capital’ floated through his ears as incomprehensibly as if they’d been spoken in a foreign language. He tried to focus, and screwed up his eyes in concentration as though squinting doubled as a translator.

    Seto, seated at his side, seemed not to share his confusion, and often interrupted the speaker to clarify or criticize. Every now and then someone’s phone would ring and they’d excuse themselves to take the call. Mokuba envied them, but when his own phone buzzed in his pocket, he knew better than to answer it.

    Over the next forty minutes, he found much more enjoyment out of analyzing the relationships of the thirteen people in the room to each other than in trying to understand them. Tanaka, who as of yet hadn’t actively participated in the discussion, sat back with an air of detached indifference, and at one point he’d actually taken a nail file out of his pocket and spent several minutes buffing his manicure. Those seated on other side of him had glanced in his direction, but though in their sneers Mokuba saw their disdain, they’d said nothing.

    Across the table, CFO Kobayashi’s dark eyes traveled back and forth along each graph as though hypnotized by an undulating cobra. Yet simultaneously, he seemed able to listen with rapt attention to each speaker, and with much the same authority as his boss, interrupt them. There was a shrewdness in his tone that made Mokuba pay more attention to the micro-expressions flickering across the swarthy face. Rather than finding it tedious to address his colleagues’ mistakes, the slight smirk playing around his mouth as he did so indicated a level of enjoyment that made Mokuba take a strong dislike to him. Even more so when he saw the twitch of a frown on his lips every time Seto spoke. Perhaps Seto was right after all that he wasn’t as well liked or respected as Mokuba had thought.

     The meeting finally adjourned, but Mokuba had to wait until the room cleared to inform his brother of his discovery.

    “He’s always thought I’m irresponsible,” Seto said with a scowl of such animosity Mokuba found himself shrinking back. “But he should know better than to display those feelings so publicly.”

      “Are you gonna fire him?” Mokuba asked hopefully. Seeing someone getting fired would surely be more entertaining than anything else he could expect to experience at headquarters.

    “No,” Seto answered dismissively. “I can’t just fire someone for not liking me; I wouldn’t have anyone left.” He crossed his arms and thoughtfully tapped his bracer, his nails against the metal producing a hollow clicking sound. “Keeping an eye on that would be a good job for you, though. I can’t be everywhere, and even if I could, no one would make a mistake like that to my face. But they’d underestimate you... The next meeting starts in fifteen minutes. Can you pay attention and tell me afterwards what you see?”

    “Sure,” Mokuba agreed eagerly. Being a spy was far more exciting than the prospect of listening, and Seto seemed to think it was an important job he couldn’t do himself.

* * *

      It was harder than Alistair had thought to keep last night’s secrets to himself, particularly when it had all left him feeling so happy. But when Trudy asked him what had caused him to be in such a good mood when he went down for breakfast, he’d told her there was nothing in particular. She seemed to be more interested in criticizing Kaiba for bringing Mokuba into the business world than in investigating further, so he largely felt no pressure to force the small smile off his face.

    “It’s just one day,” Alistair pointed out. “And Mokuba will probably find it boring enough not to go back.”

    “That’s not the point. He’s always set him such a bad example of what a person’s relationship to their work should be,” she huffed, refilling his cup of tea and trying to force another piece of toast on him. “Anyway, I’m surprised to hear you side with Seto on this; I thought you’d agree with me.”

    “I’m not saying I agree with him!” he said, hastily fiddling with his collar. “I just doubt Mokuba will actually go through with it; he’s not like Kaiba that way.”

    “I suppose not…” Trudy still looked deeply disapproving.

    “Speaking of work,” he added when he could see she wouldn’t otherwise change the subject. “I checked to make sure the library’s still hiring pages, and they are, so I thought I’d go and fill out an application today now that I have my ID!”

    After making him show her the ID and exclaiming over it, she offered to send him into the city with a packed lunch.

    “Will you be back for supper, do you think?” she asked after accepting his thanks.

    “I’m not sure yet,” he admitted sheepishly, knowing how much she hated his last-minute decisions to stay out in the city for dinner. But Darren had finally gotten back to him about a calculus tutor, and he had no idea how late it would run. “I’ll let you know by four, for sure.”   

* * *

   Being able to fill in the library job application gave Alistair such gratification he almost didn’t care if he got the job or not; he could apply to any job he pleased. The satisfaction mixed with pride when, as he handed the application to the woman at the desk, she recognized him as a library regular.

    “You just can’t get enough of this place, eh?” she quipped with a wink. “You’ll be a great page.”

    “If I get the job,” he answered modestly even as he smiled.

    “You’ll be fine,” she assured him. “The bar’s not set all that high if I’m being honest.”

    Satisfied, Alistair zigzagged back around from the library to Twist. Now that the school year had begun, Twist was often packed, but no one seemed to know where else to go, and just squeezed in a little tighter as the semester wore on.

    Alistair looked around for Darren, but couldn’t spot him amidst the sea of other people crowded into the red booths.

    Suddenly, someone called his name and he looked around. It wasn’t Darren, but a young man with dark shaggy hair and glasses beckoning him from a table in the far corner  strewn with textbooks.

    “Darren says he’s going to be late,” the young man explained when Alistair had sat down. “But what else is new, right?”

    “So you’re Leon?” Alistair clarified, holding out his hand. “I really appreciate you helping me out!”

    “Honestly, I wasn’t going to, but Darren told me you were really cute, so I figured I’d dust off my tutoring services after all.” Leon’s wink was playful enough that Alistair wasn’t sure if he was serious or not and didn’t know what else to do but laugh and hope that would be the end of it.

    “Well...thanks.” He ducked down to retrieve a test-prep book out of his backpack. “I was hoping maybe you could go over a few practice tests with me.”

    Whatever his ulterior motive, Leon was a good tutor, and over several plates of fries and refills of soda, he was able to help Alistair work through many of the walls he’d hit when studying on his own.

    “Now that we’re finished with that,” Leon began after Alistair had stored his notes and book back in his bag. “What do you say we get out of here?” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and looked eagerly at Alistair, who felt his stomach constrict. He looked over his shoulder at the door as though he could will Darren to appear.

    “Darren and I kind of had plans,” he replied, fiddling with the straw in his plastic cup, his eyes on a dried blob of ketchup encrusted onto the salt shaker. “But if you need to go…”     

    “No, I just wanted to hang out with you now that we’re done with your calculus thing.” Leon reached across the table to stop Alistair from toying with his cup, his fingers sliding along his wrist. “Come on. If you really want to meet Darren so badly, we can just go to the bathroom.”

    Leon’s expectant, slightly demanding tone, and the firmness of his grip made Alistair angry and he yanked his arm away. “Who do you think you are?” he snapped. “I’m not going to suck you off in the bathroom just because you helped me with this!”

    “What, you expected me to waste my afternoon tutoring you for free?” Leon scoffed, his hand, now lying on the table, curling into a fist. “And if you did, you shouldn’t have been such a fucking tease!”

    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alistair said, now so angry and shaken he could scarcely hold his hands steady enough to grab hold of his backpack. “But I don’t owe you a goddamn thing. I’m not some kind of...of calculus prostitute!” He slung the bag onto his shoulder with such ferocity, it banged into his abandoned chair hard enough to make it wobble. “But if this is the way you generally treat people I’m not surprised you’d have to resort to something like that. Thanks for your help though,” he added sarcastically, already heading for the door.

    “Yeah, well, I’m not into playing with fire anyway!” Leon called after him.

    Alistair forced his way out of the diner, bumping into several other patrons, but neglecting to apologize. One or two muttered comments about how rude he was being, but he ignored them.

    Only once he was outside and around the corner did he stop walking and leaned against the brick wall of a pizza parlor, his books pressing into him through his backpack and his breath coming out in smoky bursts against the chilly afternoon air. Something warm pulsed lightly against his neck, and he reached up to touch the Orichalcos stone. Even it seemed to know how upset he was. How could anyone be so blatantly slimy? Leon had called him a tease, but Alistair didn’t think he’d done anything to justify it.

Had he?

Had he leaned forward too far? Maintained eye contact too long? Smiled too easily?

His phone vibrated against his hip and with little enthusiasm, he retrieved it.

 

Darren: leon just texted me and said you yelled at him? what happened???   

    

    Alistair’s fingers hovered over the keypad. How could he explain when for all he knew he had indeed inadvertently been a tease?

    

Alistair: it was nothing.

Alistair: he propositioned me and I overreacted.

Darren: ooooh

Darren: yikes

Darren: i was about to head that way, wanna meet at that coffee shop by the park in like 10?

Alistair: ok

    

    It occurred to Alistair then that Darren had known he’d been walking into a trap since he clearly hadn’t intended to meet them at Twist in the first place. Did Darren think he was that easy too? It shouldn’t have surprised him after how he’d behaved that summer, he supposed, the disgusted feeling in his stomach now directed at himself. What an idiot he’d been not to think that would come with consequences. That it wouldn’t influence how people saw him.

    He tucked his phone back in his pocket and took off walking to the coffee shop, his eyes lowered to the dirty pavement. At least Kaiba didn’t know how slutty he’d been. The last thing he wanted was for Kaiba to think that what had happened between them hadn’t been special.

    The coffee shop Darren had in mind was excruciatingly small and had been squashed into a building that had originally housed a cell phone outlet and repair shop. This of course made it popular with the segment of the student body determined to claim they’d been the first to discover the newest quirky startup.

    Darren had managed to lay claim to a raggedy armchair squashed between a derelict side table and second armchair occupied by no less than three people draped across its sagging arms.  

    “We’re gonna have to share; it’s impossible to get two chairs in this place,” Darren apologized. “It’s so annoying that everyone comes here now--it used to be a total hole-in-the-wall.” He scooted over to make room for Alistair who, with difficulty, squeezed in beside him after removing his jacket and slinging it unceremoniously over the back of the chair, hiding an ominous scorch mark streaked along its flowery upholstery. “So what exactly happened?”

    Even sitting painfully close, Alistair found he had to yell the story in Darren’s ear to drown out the chatter of the people next to them.

    “I have a confession to make about that,” Darren began when he’d finished, running a nervous hand through his hair and almost elbowing Alistair in the face. “When I asked if he’d help you out he wanted you to pay something ridiculous for tutoring, so I may have led him to think that if he did a good job and hit it off with you there might be something else in it for him…”    

    “Why would you tell him that?” Alistair demanded, his cheeks growing hot with anger.

    “Because I honestly thought you _would_ hit it off with him,” Darren answered hastily. “I would never have done that if I didn’t think he was your type.”

    “My ‘type’?”

    “Yeah, you know. Tall, brown hair, twunky. Literally what every guy I’ve ever known you to hook up with looks like. I mean, cut me a little bit of slack.”

    Suddenly Alistair’s blush had much less to do with being angry, and he discovered he could no longer look into Darren’s eyes. “Yeah, well. I’m not doing that anymore,” he mumbled. He wasn’t sure if Darren heard him or not, but he supposed his expression was enough to get his chagrin across.

    “Oh, no?”

    Before Alistair could stop him, Darren had pulled the collar of his shirt down the side of his neck.

    Alistair pushed his hand away.“That’s different! This isn’t from some random hookup.” He re-adjusted his shirt and would have crossed his arms if there’d been space, instead resigning to clasping his hands in his lap.  

    “From your Kaiba Corp guy?” Darren asked with interest. “You didn’t tell me anything had happened!”   

    “It hadn’t until yesterday…” Even in his annoyance that Darren had set him up, Alistair found it impossible not to smile at last night’s memories. The brush of Kaiba’s hand against his face, the shy way he’d pulled his shirt off, the warmth of his mouth against his neck.

    “Well?” Darren prompted when Alistair didn’t elaborate.  But Alistair shook his head; these memories were just for him. “So...you guys are a thing now?”

    “In a way,” Alistair said, smiling again as he recalled how Kaiba had let him cuddle up beside him just that little bit.

    He knew his refusal to divulge any details only increased his friend’s curiosity, but the juicy story Darren likely imagined had little in common with what had actually happened, and Alistair found the truth too personal to reveal, anonymity or no.    

    Eventually, Darren seemed to accept he wasn’t going to get anything more out of him about it because he instead filled Alistair in on the inter-group drama he’d missed out on the past few weeks.

    Alistair let the words wash over him without really taking them in, his focus on another part of town entirely. Was Kaiba thinking about him at all, he wondered. And when he got home, would he want to see him? He’d said he was welcome in his bed, but would that include more than just sleeping? He knew now the source of Kaiba’s apprehension towards fooling around, or at least he could guess, and therefore that they had to go at whatever pace made Kaiba most comfortable. And there were plenty of other things for them to do together. Alistair could certainly think of a few with minimal effort.

    Kaiba could choose to call it whatever he wanted, but Alistair knew the look they’d shared in the garden had held more than just mutual yearning for physical intimacy. In how far Kaiba would admit that remained to be seen, but Alistair was willing to be bold to find out.

    “Hey, sorry, I’ve actually got to get going,” Alistair said, unaware he’d cut Darren off.

    “Heading over to Kaiba Corporation to rock your salaryman’s world?” Darrren asked with a suggestive waggling of his eyebrows, not seeming the least bit annoyed at having been interrupted.

    “Of course not!” Alistair snapped as with a few uncomfortable twists he disentangled himself from both Darren and the armchair. “I just have a few errands to run.” He retrieved his coat, now rumpled from having been sat on, shook it out, and pulled it on.

    “Sounds boring,” Darren replied, sliding into the middle of the chair and sighing in languid contentment as Alistair straightened out his collar and turned to leave. “Anyway, I’m sorry about the whole Leon thing; that was stupid.”

    “Well, he was a good tutor,” Alistair conceded. “But yeah, next time just tell me the cost and let me figure it out.”

    Darren gave a supercilious salute. “Aye, aye, boss.”

* * *

     Having Mokuba with him at work had turned out to be more trouble than it was worth, but Seto knew his brother was doing his best, and tried not to scold him when he saw the teen wasn’t paying attention. He’d thought that tasking Mokuba with spying on his higher-ups would appeal to his sense of excitement, but as the day wore on he could see even espionage wasn’t enough to keep his brother’s eyelids from drooping.

    “If you’re that tired, just go home,” he told him in between meetings as everyone was shuffling out of the conference room, most with their cellphones already pressed to their ears.

    “No! I’m ok!” Mokuba insisted, jumping to his feet and nearly knocking his chair over. “I just need a break to get something to eat and I’ll be fine!”

    Seto bit back his skepticism that Mokuba would actually be able to drag himself back if he left to get food, and nodded. It was the last meeting of the day, and easily the least important, so whether or not Mokuba attended was of minimal importance.

    After his brother had gone, Seto began reviewing his notes, highlighting the most important, and deleting the superfluous. Beside him, his phone started buzzing and he reflexively accepted the call without looking, his eyes still on his laptop screen.  

    “What?” he asked crisply. There were very few people who ever called his cell phone, and even fewer he felt inclined to talk to.

    “I hope I’m not interrupting anything important,” came the slightly snide reply, and Seto felt a pleasant jolt in his stomach.

    “No, fortunately,” he replied, leaning back in his chair, his gaze, while still fixed on his notes, unfocused. “Why are you calling me?”

    “I was wondering if you’d be back in time to go swimming tonight,” Alistair said, the slight purr in his tone hinting that that wasn’t all he was wondering about.

    “I could be.” Seto’d tried his best to sound noncommittal, and was disgusted by how breathy he sounded instead. He cleared his throat. “It depends on how this next meeting goes, but I suppose if you really think you still need a lifeguard, I can leave with Mokuba.”

    “I’d appreciate it.”

    Once he’d gotten off the phone, Seto set it aside and sank down, the silky fabric of his suit rustling against the leather chair. There really was no ostensible reason he couldn’t go directly home after this next meeting which meant he only had to get through another forty-five minutes, the hour-long commute, another hour for dinner, another to prep for the next day of work and finish off any remaining emails. Then he’d be free to go with Alistair to the pool…

     A leaden weight seemed to manifest against his chest. It was the same feeling he got when he dueled Yugi; the same exhilarating pressure to excel intermingled with the sickening threat of failure. And for what, the possibility of sex? He gripped the arms of the chair. Worse than worthless, sex was just this degrading, disgusting, painful thing people duped themselves into thinking they wanted. 

     Unbidden memories of white shag carpet and pale rumpled sheets forced him to his feet. Like hell he'd ever let himself be put through that again! 

     He strode to to the window, his view to the street below now obstructed only by the bare, twisted webs of the trees lining the pavement. He hated himself for nevertheless longing to be held by Alistair once more. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the little hiatus; I've been totally swamped at work!  
> But no worries: I could never abandon our boys at such a critical juncture!


	24. Children and Fools

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: explicit references to rape and child abuse

 " _Somewhere after midnight_  
_In my wildest fantasy_  
_Somewhere just beyond my reach_  
_There's someone reaching back for me."_

_~Holding Out for a Hero_ , Bonnie Tyler    

**Children and Fools**

     From the moment he arrived at work each day until he clicked open the door of his Porsche each night, Seto kept his thoughts compartmentalized, rifling through the various folders in his mind throughout the day as needed. It was a mental filing system he’d honed over the years so as never to be caught out not knowing what was going on. He was finding more and more, however, that while the technique allowed him relative omnipresence when applied to the many facets of his business, it was almost useless when applied to people, their dynamic nature constantly shifting his understanding of them, throwing him off-balance.

   How could he have predicted, for instance, that Mokuba would use one of his own routines to manipulate him?

    On the car ride back from headquarters his brother had casually reminded him that a team of decorators and event-planners would be arriving the next morning to set up for a Halloween party.

    “You never asked me about any party,” Seto said, even as a vague recollection of some such discussion rippled along the surface of his memory.

    “Yes I did,” Mokuba insisted, audaciously turning up the insistence in his tone, already reaching for his phone to undoubtedly pull up some kind of proof. “Like a month ago.” With a triumphant look that reminded Seto unsettlingly of himself, Mokuba showed him the phone record of a call to an event planner at the end of September. “I asked you if I could have some friends over for a Halloween party and you said it was ok, so I called them right after breakfast to book.”

    And then Seto remembered, not any such ludicrous agreement, but that Mokuba had unexpectedly joined him for breakfast one day. He had to admire the kid’s ingenuity.

    “Clever, asking me something like that before I’d had any coffee. I assume you never brought it up again until now because you were afraid I’d remember. You probably asked while I was reading the newspaper too... But you also must have known I’d never actually let this fly once I found out,” he added, maneuvering around several other motorists. "I'm also unclear as to who you thought would be paying for all of this."

    “You. You told me to just send the bill to our accountant."  

    “Wait a minute.” Seto looked over at Mokuba again. “ _That_ money? You told me you wanted to redo your bedroom.”

    “Duh. I lied.” Mokuba’s impish expression withered under his brother’s reproachful glare. “Oh, come on, Seto; you won’t even be there. You stay really late at headquarters all the time. If you stay out until like two, it’ll be over. I’m only asking for four hours. Please? I already invited everyone and I’ve never asked you for anything before! And I made that stupid relationship contract like you asked me to, so you owe me!”  

    It was absolutely untrue. He would have pointed out that Mokuba had asked him for many things before, but to reinforce what he’d told Mokuba about sacrifice being rewarded, he chose to relent.

    Mokuba’s face broke into a smile that would almost have made it all worthwhile, but for some of the finer details he was filled in on once they got home.

    On the rare occasions Seto came home in time for dinner, he was never really able to enjoy it. His phone would constantly go off with a barrage of emails and memos such that there was hardly a moment he wasn’t reading something or one-handedly typing out replies. As a result, he had little attention to pay whatever anecdotes Mokuba or Trudy tried to tell him, which would have nullified the point of being there at all were it not for the boon of a home-cooked meal.

    Luckily for everyone involved, Alistair was able to fill the chasm of his inattentiveness and draw him back into the conversation only when necessary. Seto had come to trust Alistair’s judgement on that count which now left him wondering if, by some lie of omission, he was the sole person unaware of the fact that fifty odd teenagers would be descending upon the estate that weekend.

    “I’m sorry, care to run that by me again?”

    “It’s a _party_ , Seto; I can’t just invite three people!”

    “And everyone else knew about this?” Seto demanded, rounding on Trudy, who was loitering nervously in the doorway clutching an empty serving tray, and Alistair, who was seated across from Mokuba looking more amused than Seto found tolerable.    

    “What difference does it make?” Mokuba asked, twirling spaghetti onto his fork. “They all have to sign wavers. It’s like you said.” He paused to take a bite. “I don’t have to trust anybody as long as I can be sure I’ve protected myself.”

    “That does sound like something you would say,” Alistair agreed with a grin.

    “Shut up,” Seto snapped. “And go away. You too, Trudy. This is family business.”

    “I’ll take this to go, then.” Alistair slid his fork and knife onto his plate and stood up. “Can I come finish this at your place, Trudy?” he asked. “I’ll help clean up after.”

    With no audience to perform for, Seto hoped that finally, he’d get the truth out of Mokuba. He moved to sit next to him, and when Mokuba refused to look up from his food, Seto reached into the depths of his well of intuitive brotherly understanding in order to tell him what he wanted to hear.

    “I know you’re frustrated today didn’t go well.” The remark was met with stony silence. “But you expected too much of yourself if you thought it was going to be easy.”

    “It was for you.” Mokuba’s voice was pinched, and he set his fork down hard on the table but still wouldn’t look up.

    “No. I did it because I had to. Because if I hadn’t, we would have gone back to the orphanage. I wouldn’t have been allowed custody of you, and we would have gotten separated. I couldn’t let that happen.”  

    “Please let me have this party, Seto,” Mokuba said after a pause, looking up at last. “I shouldn’t have lied about it, and I know it’s a lot of people, but I really, really need this. Please. I’ve already taken care of everything and nothing bad is gonna happen. No alcohol--I promise. Just a DJ, some food, and some decorations.”

    “It’s not you I don’t trust.”

    “Saito and Kanzo will check everyone before they can get in; I already asked.”

    “Saito knew about this too?” Seto demanded. “How much did you bribe everyone not to tell me about this?”

    “Nothing,” Mokuba replied, a hint of self-satisfaction returning to this tone. “I’m just really good at making this face.” He pushed out his lower lip and widened his eyes, his head tilted to one side.

    “Yeah, yeah. See if that still works in a couple years,” Seto said gruffly. “Fine. Have your party. But I will have to be there. Don’t worry: I’ll stay out of the way,” he added when Mokuba started to protest. “I’ll work from home just in case you need me. Other than that, you’ll be in charge.”

    “Awesome!” The go-ahead instantly rekindled Mokuba’s flame of enthusiasm, and he spent the remainder of the meal telling Seto about the haunted house he was planning on turning the estate into for the event.

     _We hardly need decorations for that_ , Seto thought to himself.  

* * *

    Accepting that he was going to have to share his house with so many people for an entire evening was more exhausting than it should have been, Seto knew. Especially since he didn’t, strictly speaking, have to be involved in any kind of meaningful way. But it was claustrophobic to think he wouldn’t be able to leave his room because god only knew the party would spill out of the ballroom no matter what Mokuba insisted. The mere thought of punch-drunk teenagers roaming the halls made his skin crawl, but it was something Mokuba wanted, and yet again he’d fallen victim to one of his brother’s ill-conceived whims. He really needed to stop doing that.

      His gaze flicked to the time and he felt his angst dissipate when he saw he could finally set everything else aside for the night. He had an appointment to keep, and he would hate for Alistair to think he took his commitments anything less than seriously.

     Despite the horrors he knew lurked there, Seto preferred the house at night, all the harsh lines softened by dark shadows. The bright reds and blacks of the artwork muted and even more nondescript than usual.

    As he approached the pool and the wooden floorboards gave way to tile, Seto felt his heart rate increase and paused a moment before walking through the french doors.  

    Alistair had evidently chosen to leave the lights off, the room illuminated only by the mellow underwater lights, undulating through a range of pastel shades that gave the room a strange ethereal quality. Seto watched as Alistair glided through the pool with a languid backstroke he would have been incapable of just a month before. Between the hypnotizing nature of the lights and the nymph-like grace of the lines of Alistair’s body in the water, Seto couldn’t help but feel wary.

    He was on the verge of going to change when Alistair seemed to notice him and swam to the edge of the pool, the water cascading off of him stained by the ever-shifting colors.

   “Hey,” he said. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming.” His expression was neutral, but there was something coy in the way he rested his chin lightly against his fingers, his skin glistening in the semi-darkness.

    “I’m very busy, as you know.”

     “No one would ever accuse you of being a slacker.” Alistair appeared to hesitate before adding: “I would have told you about Mokuba’s party idea if I’d really thought it’d do any good. But I figured if you wouldn’t let him have it here he’d just go behind your back and have it somewhere else.”

    “It doesn’t matter. Just make sure you stay out of the way.” Seto wasn’t interested in discussing his brother’s party when there were more relevant things to contemplate.

    For instance, how flimsy Alistair’s attempts at manipulation were what with the lights and the seduction his very presence exuded. But if sex was all he wanted he would have tried to be more covert, Seto was sure; he wasn’t stupid. By being so patent, Alistair was offering him the reins to do with what he wanted without the distastefulness of having to actually talk about the disaster of the night before. It was the kind of personalized compassion that had lured him in in the first place, but it was no less attractive for that. And he was surprised to find that the memory of Alistair’s arms around him was vying successfully to overpower the vestiges of his humiliation.

    “Aye, aye, boss.” Alistair’s supercilious salute was accompanied by a splash as he pulled his other arm out of the water.

    “Don’t call me that.”

    “What would you have me call you, oh ace one?”

    “Just call me Seto.” Seto turned on his heel and began walking to the changing room as he said it, unwilling to witness Alistair’s reaction; the words spoken somewhat unintentionally.

    He’d never cared what anyone called him before, but some deep-rooted disgust in his adopted nomenclature had burbled up at the sudden conscious understanding that it represented so much more than just a name. It was a direct link between himself and his company, and of course, to Gozaburo; invocactions he wanted to use Alistair to escape. Neither Kaiba Corporation nor his step-father belonged here.

    Alistair stared at Kaiba’s retreating back in surprise as the CEO walked away, the heels of his boots echoing hollowly off the tiles. He hadn’t realized until that moment that on some level he still thought of Kaiba as, well, Kaiba. The notion that Seto existed separately from Kaiba wasn’t something he’d ever considered as his relationship with his own name was so nonexistent.

    He pushed himself back into the water, floating absently on his back as around him the lights changed from pale pink to purple. It was certainly intriguing that Kaiba...Seto...that _he_ wanted Alistair to call him one over the other, and it reinforced his hope that spending the night together had been indicative of progression towards...something.  

    The changing room, like the rest of the pool, was tiled, and as he stood there, barefoot and in his underwear, the coldness of it made Seto shiver despite the sultry temperature of the air. On the bench in front of him, neatly laid out, were two garments. The wetsuit was the infinitely more comfortable choice, nevermind that he hated the way it felt against his skin, and the swim trunks would be a little on the nose; as overt a symbol as the silly lights Alistair had turned on in the pool. But on the other hand, wasn’t sloughing everything off the whole point?The reason he’d told Alistair to call him by his first name, the reason he’d started any of this? To exist without the oppressive facade that he was an unfeeling, uncaring android, no better than the most advanced supercomputer nor any different than what Noah had become in the Cyber World?

    With a sudden uncharacteristic rashness, he snatched up the trunks.

    The water, when he finally dove into the pool, was colder than he'd expected, but refreshing. He idly swam to join Alistair at the shallow end of the pool.

    “You’ll have to teach me how to do that,” Alistair said. “Now that I’m pretty confident I’m not going to drown.”

    “It’s not hard.” Seto had noticed how the bruises on Alistair’s neck had darkened across the day and felt ashamed to be the cause of them.

    “No one saw,” Alistair assured him when he saw where Kaiba was looking. “But even if they had, no one would have thought--.”

    “It’s not that.” Seto reached out and rested his hand across the marks, his fingers curling lightly around the curve of Alistair’s neck. Standing out even more starkly than the bruises had, were the scars on his own wrist, the raised lines seeming to glow pure white against the shifting shadows. Most faintly, a single vertical scar running jaggedly from the top of his wrist to the middle of his forearm, cutting through the methodical pattern of the others.

* * *

      It hadn’t been his initial reaction to what had been done to him. He’d had no chance then to think about anything other than how much pain he’d been in, too weak to stand even when his step-father had tried to pull him to his feet. The sharp yank had dragged one final, soft groan from his throat before he’d collapsed onto the carpet where the sight of his own blood smearing into the white fibers finally caused him to throw up.

    “You’re disgusting,” Gozaburo had said then. And he’d really sounded as if he meant it. 

    Seto tried to ignore him and focus on remaining conscious, his breathing sending yet more currents of pain shooting down his body as his step-father’s words drilled themselves into his head.

    “I tried to get this through to you the easy way.” Gozaburo approached him from where he’d gone to stand by the door, sidestepping the vomit seeping into the carpet. Seto flinched when the man’s shoes stopped centimeters from his face, but he was immobilized by pain and fear. Stupid, he knew. What else was there to possibly be afraid of? “You can’t make decisions out of kindness, out of _love_.” Gozaburo sneered. “That’s what a weakling does. And I can guarantee your brother wouldn’t have done the same for you. Now, clean yourself up. Or are you incapable even of that?”

    Then he’d gone, not even ashamed enough to close the door.

    The moment he regained the strength to move, Seto had dragged himself to the bathroom and crawled into the shower where he'd watched the blood washing down the length of the tiled stall to the drain. There hadn’t been nearly as much as he’d expected; he could remember that most clearly. No more than a bad nose bleed. Barely enough to fully discolor the water. He’d almost felt it wasn’t fair. How could all he’d endured, all he was enduring and would endure cumulate in something so anticlimactic?

    He’d slumped half in the water, in and out of consciousness, the shirt he’d forgotten to remove clinging to his skin until Gozaburo had returned with the family doctor.

    Not even Gozaburo’s disparaging, taunting remarks could get him to look up, and in the end the doctor, a ferrity-looking man who reeked of antiseptic, had hauled him out of the shower stall and back onto the bed after stripping off his sopping wet shirt.

    If he’d been surprised by the state of the boy he’d come to treat, the doctor hadn't shown it. In fact, in the entire hour he was there, he'd never looked into Seto’s face. Never addressed him even as his probing fingers had examined the deep nail marks along his thighs, the bruising around his throat and on his arms. 

    The doctor had given Gozaburo some explanation that Seto hadn’t heard; the rumbling of the two adult voices meant very little to him. He’d stared instead at the ceiling and tried to pretend he wasn’t there. He was home, watching Mokuba play with a toy dragon he'd had gifted him from his own collection. Their father was in the kitchen puttering around while some sad excuse for macaroni and cheese bubbled on the stove. As his brother zoomed around and around on the brightly colored braided rug, reaching up so his dragon could soar into some imaginary sky, Seto smiled softly.

       It had long grown dark in the room before Seto had realized he was alone again. He could still taste the vomit in his mouth and smell it in the air.

    Lying on the guestroom bed amidst the rumpled sheets stained here and there with blood and droplets of water, Seto felt like finally giving in to the urge he’d been fighting the entire horrifying evening to cry.

    What was the point of anything if his promise to Mokuba to make their lives better was impossible to ever make good on? After two years of sleepless nights, of afternoons huddled in the dark while he awaited punishment for some arbitrary infraction, resisted the urge to cry every time he remembered it was all going to happen over and over again, he’d thought he was finally going to be taken seriously. And then, right at the finish line, he’d blown it.  

    He could no longer remember how he’d come to the decision to use what remained of his strength to reach out for the decorative silver letter opener glittering on the writing desk at his side, but he remembered the weight of it in his hands. How it had reflected his face.

    There were no marks above where a shirt collar could hide them, Gozaburo had been careful about that, but his eyes were red from the tears that had forced their way down his cheeks. He hadn’t cried, though; he could at least be proud of that. His tears had just been a natural physical response to pain, not an emotional one, so there could be nothing shameful in them.

    But he had given in. His grip on the letter opener tightened as random fragments of the past few hours floated back to him. He should have fought, should have done _something_. But he hadn’t. He’d been too afraid Gozaburo would go back on his word and throw Mokuba back in the orphanage, and thus be the cause of the ruination of his brother's future.  

    Being a shield was so exhausting, though. _And why should I have to?_ he’d thought. Wasn't it God's job to watch over children and fools? As he was both, he'd have assumed he deserved double the amount of protection. But God had done nothing to intervene and had determined to watch instead; something altogether crueler than Seto would have expected from the God he'd been brought up to believe in. 

     Maybe that was it, though. God had never done anything for him at all which either meant he'd damned himself somehow or that there had never been someone watching over him. His father had explained that tragedy was God's way of testing a person's faith, but now Seto realized it was nothing more than a fairy tale to scare children into behaving and to explain the unexplainable. To trick them into believing that on some level, life was fair. But life had never been fair, and that was the hard truth of it. 

     Seto choked out a laugh when he thought of all the times he'd reminded Mokuba to say his prayers and to reassure their parents that they were all right. 

    It had been his intention to cut himself as he always had, but the sharp end of the letter opener was vertical against his vein before he’d stopped to consider what he was doing. If there was no Heaven, there was no Hell either. No real reason not to. He stared at the metal blade against his skin, his heartbeat ramping up as he imagined how satisfying the blood spilling hot and fast from this cut would be. How much better it would represent how he felt.

    The starchy fabric of the hospital pants the doctor had dressed him in rubbed uncomfortably against his legs as he tried to force himself into a more upright sitting position so as better to throw his weight against the blade even as his thighs trembled in protest.

    He’d thought briefly of Mokuba. The idea of his brother being left defenseless and alone in the huge house made him frown. It would be cruel, what he wanted to do, Hell notwithstanding. And selfish. But he’d never done anything for himself before which had only resulted in a series of choices leading him to the guest room.

    The letter opener was blunter than he’d expected and instead of his grimace and hiss of pain being accompanied by a fountain of blood welling from deep in his vein, his efforts produced an angry red scratch oozing a few droplets of blood. He’d had to choke out a laugh at that before letting the instrument slip from his fingers where it landed against the ruined carpet with a hollow thud.

     No. Life had never been fair. 

* * *

      “Are you ok?”  

     Seto blinked, dragged suddenly forward out of his memories by Alistair's question.

     Alistair was looking at him, his pale eyes full of confused concern, and Seto realized he'd left his initial statement half-finished. He removed his hand from Alistair's shoulder and let it fall back into the cold water with a splash.

    "I shouldn’t have hurt you,” he mumbled, avoiding looking into Alistair’s face again.

    Alistair reached up to touch the hickies on his neck and tried to make sense of what was happening. It was clearly significant to Kaiba even if he didn’t understand it, but he didn’t know what to say other than:

    “You didn’t. It was nice.”

    Kaiba stared steadily at him as though analyzing his response before suddenly lunging at him, gripping his hips bruisingly tight, and forcing their mouths together. It all happened so fast Alistair would have lost his footing on the tiles were it not for Kaiba holding him up.

    “Hang on,” he said breathlessly, forcing his hands against Kaiba’s chest to hold him back as the upset water sloshed around his torso. “I’m sorry if I--.”

    “Whatever.” Kaiba let go of him and backed up, his face turned away. “Let’s just swim.” Before Alistair could respond, he’d kicked off against the wall leaving Alistair to stare after him.

    True to his word, Kaiba didn’t say anything more for the next quarter of an hour, but swam lap after lap in stoic silence. Alistair tried to keep up with him, but had to take far more frequent breaks. As he pulled himself through the water, the shifting lights now appearing childishly corny, he couldn’t stop thinking about what Darren had told him weeks ago about dating someone with the kind of baggage Kaiba had being exhausting. He rejected the notion that he couldn’t handle it; that would be hypocritical. But it was frustrating. He tried his best to be forthcoming about his own issues, and when not forthcoming, at least solitary. Granted, Kaiba had caught him at several low points, but he hadn’t _foisted_ them on him.

     None of those thoughts were new, though; he knew how _he_ felt. What he didn’t know was exactly what was going on in Kaiba’s head. He’d tried his best not to pry, but it was getting to a point where he felt he needed _something_.  

    He reached the shallow end and put his feet down so he could drunkenly walk into the other lane, bringing Kaiba to a standstill on his way back.

    “What?” Kaiba snapped, his eyes betraying a glimmer of interest as he slicked his hair back off his face.

   “I like you.” When Kaiba looked taken aback, he continued. “But I think I’ve been pretty clear about that, so you don’t have to worry about whatever image you’re trying to uphold. And if you thought all I wanted was to have sex with you, I’ll tell you right now that isn’t it.”

    “And you’re telling me all this because…?”

    “Because one of us needs to say something otherwise we’re going to keep having these weird interactions where we dance around what’s going on like high schoolers.” Kaiba had crossed his arms as he spoke, but hadn’t interrupted, so Alistair barreled on, his heart beating faster than he would have preferred. “Either you like me too, or you’re playing a really convoluted long-game to try and embarrass me as a punishment for crashing your plane. So which is it?”

    “The former,” Kaiba mumbled after a pause, his gaze trained on Alistair’s necklace.

    “Good,” Alistair said crisply. “That was all.” He began moving back towards his side of the pool when Kaiba spoke with a tone far closer to his usual sarcastic snark than Alistair had heard from him in weeks.

    “The lights were a pretty lame touch.”

    “Thought you might like that,” Alistair replied with a grin. “Oh, and I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure my arms will fall off if I try to do another lap, so I’m getting out.”

    “It is getting late.”

    The changing room felt much warmer with Alistair standing beside him. Logical, Seto knew, seeing as they had just been exercising and that two people would let off twice as much body heat. But despite knowing the absolutely scientific rationale, there still seemed to be something obnoxiously emotional connected with it too.

    They had both respectfully turned their backs, but through his traitorous peripheral vision, Seto caught a glimpse of the creamy skin of Alistair’s backside as he was pulling his underwear up and quickly looked away. It was ridiculous to find anything attractive about a random part of the body. If only he could get his own body to understand that too. Then he wouldn’t feel the tedious push and pull of the tide of wanting and not wanting Alistair.

    “I don’t know if this is going to work,” he said matter-of-factly, the illusion of privacy enough to allow him to talk.

    “I know.”

    It was maddening how sage Alistair could be when Seto knew how sensitive and sentimental he really was. But most irritating of all was his normalcy.

    “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded, whipping around in time to see Alistair flinch in surprise. “Shouldn’t you be crying about your brother or moaning about how you don’t know where you belong or something? Or did none of that ever matter to you as much as you said it did?”

    Alistair felt his jaw clenching at the accusation and became peripherally aware of the warmth of the Orichalcos stone around his neck.

    “Of course it matters,” he snarled. “But I’m dealing with it. Sorry if it doesn’t look the way you want it to, but I’ve been doing my best to move on with my life, just like you told me I should when we first met!” They glared at each other until, with tremendous effort, Alistair was able to force himself to take the high road. “It’s not a contest by the way, and even if it was I wouldn’t be the winner just because not every minute of my day revolves around what’s happened to me anymore, you know.”  

    Seto regretted entering into the conversation as he realized Alistair might really understand what was going on.  

    “I know it’s not a contest,” he spat, fighting against the urge to sweep the red strand of hair that still clung wetly to Alistair’s cheek back off his face. “It’s just…” _Not fair_ , was what he wanted to say. “It’s annoying.”

     “Oh, so you’d prefer it if I went back to being depressed? How sadistic of you.” 

    “You know that’s not what I mean.” Seto sighed in frustration, just barely refraining from slamming his fist against the wall. “I just don’t understand it.” 

    If Kaiba had ever before admitted any form of intellectual roadblock Alistair didn’t know about it. And in all honesty, now that it had been pointed out, he had to admit that he was also puzzled by it. Just months before he’d barely been able to sleep through the night, then he’d started drinking himself into alcohol-induced stupors, but then, since his all-nighter wandering around the city, it had all stopped.

   He shrugged helplessly and Kaiba snorted and turned away again. 

    “Whatever. Let’s just go to bed. And don’t expect anymore bedtime stories.”   


End file.
